Education Minister Erica Stanford and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop face political problem of pulling the pin on school buildings, hospitals - Claire Trevett
The report found $3 billion more was needed to deliver on 488 school projects.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon ranked 6th in chief executives’ assessments of his Cabinet’s performance in the NZ Herald Mood of the Boardroom.
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
OPINION
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop had a Bobthe Builder “can we fix it?” epiphany when dealing with the conundrum of delivering school buildings without having enough money for them.
Fronting on a scathing inquiry about the Ministry of Education’s management of the school building programme - and a $3 billion gap between what was promised and what was funded - Bishop said fixing buildings instead of building new ones would now take more priority than in the past.
He set out the logic, which was obvious: if buildings are maintained properly, they last longer. A stitch in time saves nine and all that. Repair, don’t replace.
The political logic is a bit more fraught: it’s hard to wow the people by wandering around the country promising to caulk windows rather than build a snazzy new classroom.
“Maintenance isn’t sexy, new buildings are sexy,” Bishop pointed out.
Alas, new buildings are also very expensive and so the unsexy option will be used more instead.
Where new buildings are needed, another old-fashioned remedy would be used more: the good old pre-fab (or as Education Minister Erica Stanford prefers, the fancier moniker of “repeatable designs.”)
Now the schools whose projects had been put on pause will wait to find out when and whether they will get patched and caulked or get the new buildings they had been hoping for, and which were in many cases promised under the previous Government.
The problem Stanford set out was the consequence of political decisions as well as the way the ministry was managing the property build.
Stanford said it had also resulted in schools being given “raised expectations” of getting expensive, bespoke designs – only to either get bogged down in a queue or discover the money wasn’t there to pay for them.
The fix proposed by the report was to take the management of school property off the Ministry of Education and put it in the hands of a new entity responsible for building things. The Government will decide on that next year. In the meantime, the maintenance and pre-fabs will roll out.
Illustration / Guy Body
The approach the Government is now taking to school buildings will not stop there, either.
Bishop said the same problems of poor maintenance and demands for new buildings with limited budgets also applied in areas such as health and state housing.
As it is, the control-alt-delete buttons have been pushed across a range of areas of infrastructure – from ferry replacements (cost blowout to $3 billion), to Dunedin Hospital (again, a cost blowout to $3 billion) and the pause on the school building projects.
Stanford hit the last of those pause buttons after concluding school buildings were being over-designed and under-costed. That was backed up by that inquiry, led by former minister Murray McCully.
There is little doubt that a tidy-up was needed of the way school property was managed. The schools that had been waiting would agree with that.
Then there is the problem of politicians. One of the things the report found was that schools could jump the queue if they could get politicians on board.
Getting the politicians out of the game will be as hard as getting the money: every local politician likes to claim credit for getting a school building over the line.
As Bishop and Stanford had noted, building new things is sexy and people tended to get “raised expectations”.
There is an art to the political sales job of tearing down those expectations.
Last week’s backtrack on the rebuild of Dunedin Hospital was the most regrettable instance of that, not least because of the Government’s attempt to try to limit the political fallout.
It had claimed that spending the $3 billion on Dunedin Hospital would mean hospital developments in a raft of other regions would have to be foregone. It was a pretty blatant effort to try to pit region against region – and limit the political fallout to Otago. Little wonder it prompted marches in the street.
The same tactic was pulled out for the schools that had got their new buildings – Stanford emphasised that every “privileged school” that got a “fancy, bespoke” building came at the cost of other schools that got nothing or had to wait.
Building things is a common promise of political parties: from houses to hospitals and – in the case of the current Government – roads.
The trouble successive Governments have found is that actually building things is a lot harder than saying you will build them.
It is also very much central to the Government’s political success, and in particular National’s.
It had based a big chunk of its criticisms of the former Labour Government on its inability to deliver on big or small infrastructure projects. It’s now blaming that same Government for its own moves to scale back what was promised.
Yet its own campaign platform was chock full of dreams and roads and tunnels and hospitals and medical schools. It now has to deliver.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon address media outside Ormiston Hospital, Auckland. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
In that regard, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is far less concerned about his personal popularity than getting good marks for delivering on building things.
The marks his erstwhile chief executive colleagues doled out in the NZ Herald’s Mood of the Boardroom would probably have satisfied him because of that.
Overall, he ranked sixth in terms of his performance. (His mate and former PM Sir John Key usually ranked second behind his Finance Minister Bill English).
He got low marks for his political skills. However, he got marked highly for keeping his Cabinet focused on delivery and also got kudos for coalition management skills.
That is exactly what he has marketed himself as being strong at, rather than political nous.
In fact, at times he has tried to portray political nous as a liability rather than a virtue. His often-used exhortation to “get out of the bubble” is not only directed at the media, but also at public sector figures and even some of his own ministers.
Key, too, marketed himself as the non-politician - although he was a skilled politician, he just knew how to hide it well when required. Luxon is not.
The business sector is sensitive to uncertainty and instability and there would have been some nervousness about the awkward triplet of frenemies: Act, NZ First and National.
It was the first Mood of the Boardroom since that coalition formed and Luxon’s management of things was credited for the stability that has so far ensued – and for the focus on core business.
Luxon would likely have quietly enjoyed the reprimand some chief executives handed out to Act leader David Seymour. Seymour was possibly surprised to be ranked only at 12th.
He was beaten out by his deputy, Brooke van Velden (who was helped by being workplace relations minister) and NZ First leader Winston Peters, who came in 7th.
Seymour is charged with a business-friendly red-tape cutting crusade and has attempted to put the belts and braces on National’s more indulgent spending proposals, such as a medical school at Waikato University.
He did get kudos for his approach, but the reason chief executives gave for the marks off was Seymour’s attention to other issues – and in particular what they saw as divisiveness – presumably a reference to the Treaty debate.
Yes, Seymour would argue he can walk and chew gum at the same time. The problem is that the gum-chewing has been loud and distracted from the walking.
