Labour & their followers

another of labour's well-intentioned

but absolutely hopeless reorganisations

Leaderless, well behind schedule, and sinking into a $110 million black hole.

The fortunes of Te Pūkenga, the country’s new merged mega polytech are in dire straits before the organisation has even properly begun functioning.

A damning memo sent from Tertiary Education Commission deputy chief executive Gillian Dudgeon to Education Minister Chris Hipkins paints a very black picture of Te Pūkenga’s fortunes – and provides illumination on the possible reason for the recent mysterious departure of chief executive Stephen Town.

Based at the current Wintec campus in Hamilton, Te Pūkenga is the result of the Government’s reform of vocational education and involves the country’s 16 institutes of technology and polytechnics and four Industry Training Organisations across Aotearoa becoming one entity.

www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/129230563/damning-report-reveals-financial-meltdown-at-new-mega-polytech-te-pkenga

the 1 thing labour is good at is "making things worse"

time to let them go

and try to repair the damage

from Kiwi blog on the new centralised polytech system

The mega polytech mega meltdown
Stuff reports:

Leaderless, well behind schedule, and sinking into a $110 million black hole.

This could describe almost any part of Government, but in this case it is Chris Hipkins’ merger of all the polytechnics into one.

Dudgeon’s grim memo to Hipkins – which is dated May 16 but was published on the commission’s website late last week – sets out the details of Te Pūkenga’s troubles in stark detail.

The organisation’s financial situation was a “significant concern”, with the Te Pūkenga group forecasting an at-least $110m full-year deficit.

“This is $53.5m worse than budget ($56.5m deficit) and is predominantly due to lower provider-based enrolments,” she said.

A $110 million deficit. And the rationale for the mega merger was that the sector lost $53 million in 2017. So what Hipkins claimed was the solution has led to it doubling.

Some parts of the memo deemed commercially sensitive had been censored before release, including mention of a figure that the $110m deficit could further balloon, due to “rising cost pressures”.

Of course it will increase.

The 2021 annual report also showed one employee – evidently the chief executive – was earning an income of between $670,000 and $679,999.

By comparison, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is earning $471,049.

A further five Te Pūkenga employees are earning between $380,000 and $451,000.

I may be wrong but I’m sure no one was earning that at the old polytechs.



Anyone want to bet that the new centralised maorified health system is going to be any different?

That story was on MSM as well, either stuffed or Red Radio. So it is not just Kiwiblog reporting it. Sounds like there was existing fundamental problems, and the restructure of the sector did do jack to fix those problems. Basic issues are not enough income from enrolments, and too high fixed costs (which I think means stuff, either that or too many managers...)

The headache inducing issue with the health restructure, is it is beyond me how it can make any difference to resourcing and delivery. They are just shuffling around reporting lines and the location of managers. There is possibly an assumption that by combining the 20 something DHB's there will be a reduction in managers. But with the Supercity, they said that would lead to 'efficiencies' as well, and, erm, I don't think it did....

I would have thought doing things like paying nurses more - to attract qualified nurses back into the profession, and midwives, social workers, mental health workers. This demographic are often also Mums who would prefer to stay at home if they could. If they got paid more, many would work more or return to the profession. I'm sure most of us know a health professional that has left the profession, or reduced their hours so they can cope with the work intensity and stress.

Dr's, train more. Pay for their training. Improve the staffing ratio's so they aren't strung out trying to deal with too much.

That is what I think, but I didn't bother applying for a role at Health NZ. I don't have scribbles on my face so wouldn't get an interview.

thebfd.co.nz/2022/07/13/kainga-ora-is-a-basket-case/

Maybe if they had hired some builders?

Kairanga Ora ask me and some colleagues to do some work for them a while ago.
The gave us no notice they wanted the work done, wanted it done in half the time it would normally take us, wanted us to provide discounted rates (cause they were KA) and wanted us to sign up to their contract terms and conditions, rather than the industry standard one. Their contract was 60 pages long, and would take us about 40 hours to read and understand the implications of their conditions. The industry standard one is 2 pages, and one page includes your name and the other parties name.

Oh, and they only wanted us to look at half the job, but answer the 'whole of the job' question. So we couldn't even agree on what scope was required to answer their question properly. Combined with their onerous contract conditions, will told them to fuck off (but in a way they didn't take it personally).

They seem to have very high turnover of staff, so we were never actually dealing with the same person, or the person we were dealing with didn't actually understand what was going on. Or know who within the organisation to talk to to overcome a particular road block. It was just painful.

When I work for private sector developers, they don't quible over the cost of the work, agree with what we tell them needs to be done to answer their question and don't normally care what contract we use, as long as we answer the question properly (no fish hooks) and deliver on the date we said we would. And often in this situation, they give me a bottle of whisky afterwards as a thank you for doing a good job.

Stephen Town was the head of the big super tech institute in the Waikato.

20 minutes of your life on why the soviets lost the computer/future race

hint: central planning and putting ideology ahead of efficiency and productivity

just like this hopeless student-radical led labour gov.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8&ab_channel=Asianometry