Parata capable but naive
Hekia Parata’s surprise decision to step down in 2017 is good news for John Key’s Government. Parata’s career shows that a Cabinet minister can have intelligence and wide knowledge and still be politically naive.
Parata will be remembered as the minister who promoted the idea that class sizes could be increased without affecting the quality of education. Parents reacted badly to this and their anger threatened to damage the Key Government. Eventually, of course, the Government had to back down.
Why Key did not sack his minister then is a mystery. But Key has persisted with Parata even though her reign has caused many other problems as well. Her handling of the closure of earthquakedamaged schools in Christchurch, for example, was a shambles.
Closing schools is always a political minefield. Communities tend to be protective of their schools. When governments try to close them, the communities close ranks and fight back. In that situation an education minister needs consummate diplomatic skills. These Parata never had. In many ways she had a cloth ear both for the nuances and the pitfalls of politics in general.
She had, as a long-serving former official, a fatal fondness for jargon and technical language. She tended to use this style in the House, where it caused scorn and derision. Political enemies will not forgive pretentiousness or high-falutin’ talk. It was easy to lampoon Parata-speak as gibberish.
The minister was always anxious to show off her knowledge of education matters. Often this seemed to be more important than engaging with her critics or with the issues.
To see her give evidence to a select committee, flanked by her former departmental chief executive Peter Hughes, was to learn a valuable lesson about how to do politics. The wily chief executive would speak simply and answer questions directly. Parata, on the other hand, was typically irritable, haughty and off-key.
Parata was unlucky enough to inherit the bottomless shambles of Novopay. She fell out with her then-chief executive Lesley Longstone, and developed a lasting reputation for being difficult to deal with. Eventually Key appointed the Cabinet fix-it man Steven Joyce to fix Novopay.
Parata was happy, however, to do her share of the Government’s dirty work. She has championed charter schools, the policy foisted on National by Act, which had no mandate for it whatsoever. This too has been a rocky road, with some signal failures and foulups.
She is now in the middle of major educational reforms, including the scrapping of the decile system and the revamping of the broader system for financing schools. It remains unclear whether she will replace the perhaps rather clumsy decile system with something better for the disadvantaged.
Her plans to bring in what seems to be a modified form of bulk funding, meanwhile, have proved unpopular with teachers and now seems doomed. Will she persist with it anyway?
It’s not clear yet whether Key will keep her on till her retirement at the 2017 election. He would do better to replace her now and cut his losses.
John Key should cut his losses.