20 December 2017

Hipkins needs to do his homework

Education Minister Chris Hipkins revealed that he doesn’t even know some basic facts about his Government’s flagship tertiary policy, after being embarrassingly corrected by his officials in Select Committee today, National Party Tertiary Education Spokesperson Paul Goldsmith says.

“When asked to confirm that a CE of a company could go off to do their MBA and have the first year paid for by taxpayers, Mr Hipkins said that they would not be eligible under the fees-free policy.

“A few minutes later he was passed a note by officials saying he’d got it wrong and confirmed that the fees-free policy actually does apply to post-graduate study like MBAs.

“It’s hard to know what’s worse – that the Government’s $2.8 billion tertiary policy is so grossly untargeted that taxpayers will be funding wealthy and successful people to get their MBA, or that the Minister in charge of the policy isn’t even across the basic detail.

“Mr Hipkins deliberately inserted himself into the Select Committee briefing which was initially intended to involve officials only – you’d think he would have done his homework.”

ends

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