4 December 2001 Media Statement

Maharey – business community must engage in the development of the Tertiary Education Strategy

Associate Education (Tertiary Education) Minister Steve Maharey told the Top Exporters Conference in Wellington today that it was time for the business community to engage with the Government, and other stakeholders within the tertiary education sector and the community at large, in developing a Tertiary Education Strategy.

“New Zealand needs a tertiary system that is outwardly focused on the world, able to meet the future development needs of our nation and distinctively ‘New Zealand’ in its style and tone.
“We need a system that is ‘connected’ to New Zealand’s national development goals, and ‘connected’ with other sectors of society and the economy.

“One of the key change propositions that will feature in the draft Tertiary Education Strategy will be the need to build Stronger linkages with business and other external stakeholders.

“We must ensure that the tertiary system is responsive to the skill and research needs of the economy and society,” he said.
Steve Maharey said that this was where the business community in particular has a key role to play.

“This strategy cannot be a strategy of and for providers. It must be a strategy that is quite explicitly informed by the needs of end users – students in an immediate sense to a degree, but in a more developmental sense, the needs of stakeholders within the real economy.

“One often hears in politics the refrain, ‘put up or shut up’. Let me clear, I don’t want you to shut-up, far from it, but I do want the business community to ‘put up’. It is, to paraphrase a well-known retailer, the ‘putting up that counts’,” Steve Maharey said.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>