Hooton on Tinetti

Matthew Hooton writes:

Until now, it has been assumed that for sheer, unadulterated incompetence, no Government could ever beat Jacinda Ardern’s ministry for KiwiBuild.

Full credit, then, to Chris Hipkins’ Beehive for proving everyone wrong. It turns out that the centrepiece of its election-year Budget – giving 2-year-olds 20 hours of free early-childhood education (ECE) – will more likely force centres to close.

Combined with the Government’s own ECE regulations, the new policy seems to require ECE workers to be paid below the minimum wage, something you’d have expected at least one minister to have been able to work out on a napkin.

Ultimately responsible is Education Minister Jan Tinetti, who also has her primary and secondary teachers on strike, her universities and polytechnics going broke, and who has become the first MP to be referred to Parliament’s privileges committee for contempt of Parliament since Winston Peters after 2008′s secret-donations scandal.

We should have an annual award, maybe called the Twyford award, and Tinetti would be a contender for the 2023 award.