Anne Tolley MP National Party Education Spokeswoman

7 August 2008

Wassup now? Motivational origami pyramids. Niiiiiice.

Education Minister Chris Carter personally signed off spending for nearly $60,000 on a campaign for Maori education that featured badges bearing words like wassup and niiiice on them, says National's Education spokeswoman, Anne Tolley.

"But it gets even more farcical now we know that the Ministry first contemplated using origami pyramids with motivational sayings on them to promote Ka Hikitia. They changed their minds on the $7,000 origami and then came up with the wassup badges which the Minister approved at almost 10 times that cost.

"Schools dumped these badges en masse into rubbish bins around the country, incensed at the waste of money on useless promotional material when they were struggling to make ends meet.

"This is the same Ministry that capped off the wassup debacle by spending a further $70,000 on checklist cards so students could establish whether they were being bullied or not, as if it wasn't patently obvious.

"Chris Carter is presiding over the same Ministry of Education that has spent more than $117,000 on a 'Fuelled 4 School' website, Bebo page, and text message service.

"And perhaps because he was unsure how his wassup badges, origami pyramids, websites, and bullying cards would go down with principals screaming out for funds to run basic school functions, he increased his number of communications staff from five in 1999 to 35 in 2008 at a cost to the taxpayer of $2.47 million.

"Niiiice."

ENDS

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