The Tinetti timeline

Education Minister Jan Tinetti will be appearing before the Privileges Committee this week in relation to misleading Parliament over the release of attendance statistics for schools.

Generally this data is released by the end of each term, for the previous term. So the Term 3 2022 data should have been released in December 2022. Here is a timeline of key events:

• 7 Dec – MOE Deputy Secretary says to select committee “I’m really keen to get it (attendance data) out this side of Christmas, so I’m expecting that any day now”
• 9 Dec – MOE tells journalist “hoping to release Term 3 attendance data prior to Christmas.”
• 14 Dec – Term 3 data is provided to Minister and ready for release.
• 23 Dec – MOE tells journalist the data has been delayed because the Minister has requested additional information
• 26 Jan – MOE asks Minister’s office to provide a date they can release it
• 30 Jan – PMs Office advised by Tinetti’s office they have delayed release
• 9 Feb – Tinetti’s office replies to MOE saying maybe release data next week
• 14 Feb – MOE again asks Minister’s office for a date for release and Minister’s office tells Ministry they want data released after they release attendance package
• 20 Feb – MOE again asks for a date they can release data
• 21 Feb – Govt announces attendance package. Tinetti on AM Show when asked why data wasn’t released in December says “It’s not my data to release, it’s the Ministry of Education’s”
• 22 Feb – Attendance data finally released
• 22 Feb – Tinetti said in the House “I can categorically tell that member that the Ministry of Education is responsible for the data. I have no say over that.” and in response to “Can the Minister categorically state here in the House today that she played no part in the delay of the release of the information when it was made available to her on 20 December?” responded “I already have. It is a decision for the Ministry of Education.”
• 22 Feb – Tinetti claims that only after speaking in the House that day did she become aware her office arranged the delay in the attendance stats
• 20 Apr – Stanford writes to Speaker asserting Tinetti has breached privilege by not correcting her answer as soon as she became aware it was incorrect
• 2 May – Tinetti corrects her answer
• 30 May – Speaker refers Tinetti to Privileges Committee

Now the question before the Privileges Committee is whether Tinetti is in contempt as she took over two months to correct her answer.

This is a seperate issue, to whether one believes Tinetti honestly didn’t know when she spoke in the House on 22 February. To believe Tinetti’s version of events her office arranged the delay with the Ministry without ever telling her. They told the PMs Office, but not their own Minister. Tinetti never ever wondered about why the data was delayed until the day after her announcement.

Further the question from Stanford to Tinetti on 22 February was a primary question (On what date was she provided with the term 3 2022 attendance data by the Ministry of Education, and why was the data not released publicly until just yesterday?) which she would have received three hours before question time. Ministers don’t just wonder into question time unprepared. The practice their answers with their staff. Are we really to believe that even after this question was set down for answer, Tinetti’s staff still didn’t tell her they they were involved in delaying the release?

So this is bad either way for Tinetti. Even if you accept everything she said is true, her only defence to the Privileges Committee is that both she and her staff are so incompetent they didn’t realise that the Minister needs to correct the record after misleading the House.

A interesting aspect is that for some of this time, Tinetti was only the Associate Minister of Education. The Minister was Hipkins up until he became PM. While Tinetti had delegated authority, is it possible that it was in fact Hipkins who had his staff instruct Tinetti’s staff to delay the release. By mid December he would have known he was about to become Prime Minister in January, and he may not have wanted the data out showing a huge drop in attendance while he was Minister. That could explain why Tinetti was in the dark (if you believe she was) – her staff were doing what Hipkins office had instructed?

The other aspect to this which hasn’t been covered is that the delay of the data actually impacts schools negatively in terms of their planning. You see it is only after the national tables for attendance are released that the Ministry can release data on each school back to that school. This is important information to them for planning purposes – much of which occurs over the December/January break. So schools actually wanted that data in December, not in late February. They were inconvenienced to try and make the Government look good.