A small shuffle

John Key has announced:

Steven Joyce becomes Tertiary Education Minister, allowing Anne Tolley to fully focus her efforts on the Education portfolio, and in particular the implementation of the Government’s national standards policy.

I said almost a year ago that I thought both Education and Tertiary Education was a huge workload, especially with no Associates from your own party.

I will be fascinated as to Steven’s approach to tertiary education. It has quite a few pressure points in it.

Kate Wilkinson becomes Conservation Minister, a portfolio in which she is currently Associate Minister. This change reflects the fact that Tim Groser is frequently out of the country representing New Zealand’s interests in the Trade and Climate Change fields.

In other words Kate has effectively been the Minister, so this makes it official.

Mr Groser, because he has primary ministerial responsibility for the international negotiations aspects of Climate Change, will have a change in title and becomes the Minister Responsible for International Climate Change Negotiations.

That should not take up too much time, as there isn’t much to negotiate. The US, China and India are all running 100 miles an hour away from an agreement.