Trust visit changes Hide's mind

LOCAL Government Minister Rodney Hide wants the new Auckland Council to play a leading role in directing Government social spending in the region.

After proposing early this year to remove promotion of social wellbeing from the purposes of local government, the Act Party leader told a conference on social policy in the Super City yesterday that a visit to the City of Manukau Education Trust (Comet) had changed his mind.

"Comet taught me the crucial role local government can play in better directing and facilitating centrally funded education and development programmes," he said.

"I am enthusiastically working with the Minister of Social Development and Employment to see how we can, through local government, achieve more in this area."

His about-face, described by Waitakere Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse as a "road to Damascus experience", delighted the 400 people who attended the conference.

Comet's family literacy programme, which teaches 80 parents basic literacy and parenting skills and prepares them to train as early childhood teachers, will lose its funding from the end of this year because of changes made by the Tertiary Education Commission.

Mr Hide praised the programme, saying: "Parents and grandparents have learned to read and write and gone on to get degrees and to teach. The children's performance at school has dramatically improved."

Comet chief executive Bernadine Vester said Prime Minister John Key was also impressed when he met parents in the scheme last week.

Mrs Vester is now talking to the Education Ministry about other ways to fund the $350,000-a-year programme.

"The Prime Minister understands that the complexity of programmes like this is not addressed by siloed funding streams. What he's done is ask the ministry to look more fully at how we can support multiple-outcome programmes," she said.

Comet, created by the Manukau City Council in 1999, has also led a drive for more early childhood education in Manukau. The council has responded by speeding resource consents for preschool education centres and leasing council land to 40 of them at peppercorn rents.