Minister described as Luddite

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 31

Minister described as Luddite

PA Wellington The Minister of Education, Mr Wellington, was described as an “education Luddite” by Labour’s education spokesman, Mr C. R. Marshall, in Parliament.

Speaking during the estimates debate, Mr Marshall (Wanganui) said that Mr Wellington was “negative, petulant and sometimes hostile with those with whom he has to work.” The Minister was “an education Luddite trying to stop change.” He had “no commitment ... no fight for the portfolio ... no real empathy or understanding for education.”

Education cuts were not only bad morally and socially, Mr Marshall said, but bad economically for the country. Even if Government cuts were accepted, he said, education should be saved as much as possible as it represented the country’s greatest asset, its young people. Mr Wellington accused Mr Marshall of being “a parrot of every education pressure group in this country.” He went around addressing conferences, “simply regurgitating their shopping lists,” said the Minister.

The National Government had introduced 194 new education policies since it took office in 1978, he said. Education spending in this year’s Budget was a record high. Mr J. L. Hunt (Lab., New Lynn) said that for many years, Mr Marshall had maintained the only glimmer of hope for many people in the education system.

In contrast, Mr Wellington was “reviled by every major educational organisation in New Zealand,” said Mr Hunt. He said that recent studies has shown university education was becoming the preserve of the wealthy. Fourteen per cent of New Zealand fathers worked in professional or managerial capacity, yet their children made up 65 per cent of the roll at the Otago Medical School.

While 30 per cent of fathers worked in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, only 2 per cent of the roll had fathers in that category.

Mr Hunt said that in 1975 under a Labour Government, education took 17.4 . per cent of Government spending. In 1984 that figure would be 11 per cent. Mr R. M. Gray (Nat., Clutha) said that there were more university students now than before. That indicated they were happy to be there, he said. He described Mr Wellington as one of “the great leaders in education in this country” because he was prepared to give firm direction to the system. Mr Wellington said that there were 56,500 university students. Under the last Labour Government there were only 36,000.

In the last two Budgets an extra $l5 million had been spent on helping university students.

It was neither valid or credible for the Opposition to claim that young New Zealanders were being denied access to universities, said Mr Wellington.

Dr M. J. Cullen (Lab., St Kilda) said that the rise in

university rolls was caused by an influx of wealthy students. “The universities of this country are becoming intellectual biomass programmes for processing the droppings of the wealthy — that is their role,” he said. They were no longer concerned with promoting social mobility, said Dr Cullen. He also asserted that Mr Wellington had attempted to use the private schools’ integration issue for the “crudest means of gaining votes I have ever seen. “This Minister, not satisfied with parading around the country like some labotomised version of Jerry Lewis, has continued trying to become a sort of cross between lan Paisley and the I.R.A. by trying to persuade Catholic voters that this party will wind back on the integration of Catholic schools. “That is an absolutely despicable manipulation of the facts,” said Dr Cullen. “It is absolutely dangerous, because any politician in this country who plays at trying to use religious differences for political purposes is laying the groundwork for the kind of mayhem we have seen in Northern Ireland.” Such action was a betrayal of the teaching ethic, Dr Cullen said, “but this Minister of course was never a properly-trained teacher in the first place." Mr G. E. Lee (Nat, Hauraki) said that Dr Cullen’s speech was one of the most vicious heard in the House. It had totally distorted the Minister and was a disgrace to the Opposition, said Mr Lee.