Andrew Dickens: The great polytech flip-flop we’re all paying for

Here we go again. 

The polytechs that were centralised by the last government are going to be de-centralised by the current mob. 

It's not quite back to the future because it won't be the same as we had before the politicians started tinkering.

There will now be ten polytechs run locally, six others will have to prove their financial viability, but it still feels like we're going back to where we started from.

And this ideological flip flop isn't free. 

The Labour Government allocated hundreds of millions of dollars over several years to support the merger and transformation of the vocational education sector.

And now National has budgeted $200 million to fund the reversal.

Key Cost Drivers in this change include swapping out the IT and systems integration across multiple institutions from centralised to local. 

Obviously, staff restructuring, which includes finding new staff for the polytechs and firing some staff created in the centralisation. 

Then there's branding and communications and legal and compliance costs.

It isn't cheap and at the end of the day, we're back to square one. 

The same things happening over at Health New Zealand. It's happening all over the country as the government reverses Labour's changes. People are packing up their desks that they packed up four years ago.

Now who to blame? Labour for coming up with the new ideas in the first place, or National's dogged determination to reverse everything the last mob did because they've built their brand on not being Labour?

I don't know about you but the whole thing feels like wasteful government spending, and are we substantially better off?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here we go again. The polyitechs that were centralized by
the last government are going to be decentralized by the
current mob. So we're not quite going back to the future,
but because it's not going to be quite the same
as we had before the politicians started tinkering. There will
now be ten polytechs run locally. Six others will have

(00:22):
to prove their financial viability. But it still feels like
we're going back to where we started from and this
ideological flip flop that we've been going through is not free.
So the Labor government allocated hundreds of millions of dollars
over several years to support the merger and transformation of
the vocational education sector. They started doing this back in
twenty twenty. It's five years of it hundreds of millions

(00:43):
of dollars. Now NASAL has budgeted another two hundred million
dollars to fund the reversal. The key cost drivers in
this change include swapping out the IT and systems integration
across multiple institutions. They centralized them, now they have to
localize them. Obviously, staff structuring, which includes finding new staff
for the politics and firing some staff created in the

(01:04):
centralization that we're in Wellington. Then there's branding and communications,
and there's legal and compliance costs. It ain't cheap and
at the end of the day we're back to square one.
Who knows that the politics are going to be profitable
And the same thing's happening over at Health New Zealand.
In fact, it's happening all over the country. As this
government reverses the last government's changes, people are packing up

(01:25):
their desks all over the country that they first packed
up four years ago. So when you look at this,
who's to blame well labor for coming up with the
new ideas in the first place, or is it national's
dogged determination to reverse everything the last mob did because
they've built their brand on not being labor. But I
don't know about you. The whole thing feels like wasteful

(01:46):
government spending and the question we have to ask ourselves
after this five years of change, are we substantially better off?
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
to News Talks it be from five am weeks or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.