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  AGENDA, JULY 23 (Note: The interview with a New Zealand Muslim who says he has personally faced radical, banned "Muslim terror groups" such as the Wahhabi, Hizb Ut-Tahrir movement and the Al Haramain Foundation in New Zealand, appears below). SIMON It's been a hard week for Education and Energy Minister, Trevor Mallard- although he's just told me it's not been that hard. He's been challenged to put up or shut up over his allegations that the National Party's being driven by American interests. A State Services Commission report slammed the bureaucracy and lack of leadership across the education sector as well in his education ministry, the Tertiary Education Commission and NZQA. Mr Mallard joins me now. University academics are on strike claiming they're underpaid, seeking a 30% pay boost, how realistic is that? TREVOR Well I'm not going to get involved in numbers because they're negotiating with their employers the Vice Chancellors, but one thing is clear and that is that many of our academics work in an international market, it's something which is quite different from most people who live and work in New Zealand and we've gotta keep paying people reasonably in order to keep them here, now that’s often more important for some of the high flyers but even at the basic rates it's important. SIMON So you accept that we are in danger of losing some of our best academics? TREVOR Oh we always have turnover, I mean there's no doubt about that, we have people who come to New Zealand from overseas and we get a lot of people here on lifestyle grounds. I mean clearly there's not many occupations in New Zealand because of our relatively low wage rates compared to other countries where we win on the basis of wages, it's a combination of the quality of life, the very exciting work that’s being done in many of our universities, but pay's a factor. SIMON In international terms though our public investment per student's around two thirds of the UK, half that of Australia and Canada, it's not really good enough is it? TREVOR I think it depends on how it's calculated. SIMON …..purchasing power parity. TREVOR We can always work our figures around in this area and we've made a significant increase in the time since I've been Minister, I mean we have gone from a pure bums on seats method to having a performance based research fund method where a lot of the money is going out of just having numbers into those areas that are doing good research and there's centres of research excellence, again international leadership in a number of our areas of excellence. But that takes time, it takes money and quite a big increase so far. SIMON But you have as a government pushed the knowledge wave as the basis for - underlining quality education is the basis for future productivity. The recent OECD report said the same thing, what are you doing to back that up though? TREVOR Well university funding since I've been minister has gone from round 750 to over 900 million dollars a year, 150 million is quite a big boost. SIMON Yeah but it's dropping as a proportion of government spending from 15.7% last year to 13.7% projected for 08/09. TREVOR Oh no no you can't use those figures cos they only include this year's inflation figures they don’t count our year inflation estimates whereas some of the other areas do. You just can't use figures like that. Look at this year compared to last year and compared to 99, those are the right figures because 08/09 figures have got two more inflation increases to go into that budget. SIMON So as a proportion of government spending it's been increasing over the last few years? TREVOR It's been moving up although it's been moving down on a per student basis, basically because there's been a bums on seats approach that we're working away from. SIMON Why is so little of the budget's new funding for education directed at the tertiary sector? TREVOR Well a lot of it has. Much of it has been pushed towards student and student loans. SIMON Four hundred and twenty three million dollars of new spending but only 14 million dollars of that goes to the tertiary sector, 23% of the vote of education allocated to tertiary, only 3.2% of the 05/06 budget though. TREVOR We could work our way through the figures sort of one at a time. SIMON There's very little, there's very little money of this new spending being devoted to tertiary. TREVOR Well 25 million dollars in the out year, tertiary spending often builds up, 25 million dollars extra into the PPRF, a lot of money into calls that wasn’t there, centres of research excellence, that wasn’t there in the past, a lot of extra money into science as a result of …. SIMON But as a proportion relative to its size in the education sector tertiary is not getting its share of new funding. TREVOR Tertiary overall has had massive increases in the past. One of the things that we are doing is shifting the money from lower value tertiary education, bums on seats approach, sometimes not even bums on seats, sometimes CD roms. SIMON Let's talk about bums on seats, EFTS, equivalent full time students. It is essentially rewarding institutions for the bums on seats. I mean how satisfied are you with the way that works? TREVOR That’s why funding has been transferred away from the EFTS model on to a model which rewards research excellence, on to a model which in the future will reward teaching excellence, that’s why the rates for some of the specialist areas, some of the science areas, some of the really expensive areas have been lifted, and by the way for trades as well because they were also underfunded, whereas the classes where you can teach sort of 600 students in a first year lecture, those rates are unlikely to be lifted by the same amount. SIMON So you will be differentiating the excellent from the average when it comes to funding? TREVOR Absolutely. SIMON How do you justify the funding model though that’s made no real difference between the degree courses, perhaps the excellent end that you're looking at and the singalongs? TREVOR Well that’s been what the changes of the last week have all been about. SIMON Why has it taken so long though. Is it just because it's been highlighted in the media? TREVOR No no, essentially it was done in two phases. We realised in 2003 that there had been extraordinary growth in the non degree courses, and that’s not just singalong it's certificate and diploma courses, some done in universities but mainly done in polytechs and at wananga. SIMON Have you stopped funding the singalong courses? TREVOR Yes, and to be fair if you look at what they cost, you know those and the twilight golf they went I think in 2003 and 2004. SIMON We rang the Eastern Institute of Technology yesterday and they're still offering a fully subsidised free course He Waiata Mata Whanau, an introduction to Maori language through song, should the taxpayer really be footing that bill? TREVOR But not on the radio. SIMON Yes that’s what it says here, free radio course offers an introduction to Maori language through waiata. That’s yesterday. TREVOR Well I'd been briefed that it's off. SIMON Still it's on the net, it's still available. TREVOR Well it shouldn’t be and it certainly will not be funded, they won't be getting any funding for it from the end of this year on. SIMON Eight hundred and eight five thousand it was in funding last year. TREVOR Yeah and very low value for money and that is why I have taken 160 million dollars out of those sort of courses so that we've got it available to do the more valuable things that we think are very important. SIMON A hundred and sixty one with that one. The State Service Commission report this week earlier, reviewing the education sector said among other things there needs to be stronger leadership in the senior secondary and tertiary education sector across the three agencies and the three education agencies do not have the capability to take a strategic approach to policy implementation. How much of a mess is our education bureaucracy in? TREVOR Well I think that’s a fair comment, we've had enormous change really over ten years in education. We've had a new commission formed, we've shifted to an EFTS model, we've tightened up the EFTS model, we've got a whole new senior secondary system, we've got a whole pile of kids staying at school who didn’t stay there previously and people have been looking at the changes, the policy changes, rather than looking at the administrative structure, that’s clearly gonna change. SIMON The bureaucracy has failed though. TREVOR It is failing. SIMON That’s what the report says, who's responsible? TREVOR No the bureaucracy's been focused on the policy rather than on itself and what is clear is that from now on the Secretary for Education will take a strategic leadership role, he will have responsibility for making sure those agencies are properly co-ordinated. What was happening… SIMON You're talking about Howard Fancy- does he have your full unqualified confidence? TREVOR Yeah. SIMON Full unqualified confidence? TREVOR Well first of all that’s a matter for Dr Prebble but if it was a matter for me I'd say yes. SIMON He does? TREVOR It's not a matter for me, I mean I think Howard Fancy has lead a lot of change under both governments. SIMON The report seems to suggest that there's major failings though, where does the buck stop on those? TREVOR Well in the end it depends on which particular buck. Part of our problem is that we've had a series of silos, so you’ve had NZQA over here, you’ve had the TEC and you’ve had the Ministry. SIMON So why don’t we just have one agency? TREVOR Well the SSC considered that and what they said was that the cost of change and the risks involved in making the change were too much, but what they said was instead of having three absolutely separate agencies the Secretary for Education should take a leadership role across it, and I think that’s important. SIMON How do you justify expenditure on this bureaucracy sector, particularly on policy regulation and administration, growing by 58% over the past three years from 02/03 particularly when we're seeing minor growth in other areas of investment in education? TREVOR Well essentially it's the argument that we've just had… SIMON But they're throwing more money at it out of proportion to where the other money's going. TREVOR Well we're putting a lot of money into making sure that we're not spending the 160 million on rotten courses, we're putting quite a lot of money into regulation of early childhood education and policy development there because we're making some massive changes, and we're gonna put a lot of extra funding into that area, so what we're essentially doing is getting the rules right and unfortunately to get the rules right you’ve gotta spend a bit of money. SIMON Your tertiary education policy has yet to be announced, we understand, we hear it will cap fees and change student allowances. What have you got to offer students? TREVOR Well what I've said, I'm not going to give you the policy now, what I've said is that in the end the test of a policy is how long a student has to, or a graduate takes to pay off their loan. So there are three ways of doing it, you look at how many people get student allowances, you look at what are the fees that they have to pay and you look at the conditions of the loan and we're not very far away from what I think will be a very attractive policy. SIMON Trevor Mallard thank you. We'll be back after the break to talk about energy. SIMON I'm back with Education Minister Trevor Mallard, he's also Energy Minister and we're talking energy now. Harry Duynnhoven told an energy symposium in Invercargill earlier this year and I quote that “the view that [the] government does not want coal resources developed is incorrect.” What are you planning for coal production? TREVOR Well I'm not prepared to rule out coal as energy production. I happen to be in the electorate where both the Coal Research Institute works and IRL. Coal could well in the future be used for gasification, for the production of hydrogen for hydrogen fuel, hydrogen cell technology, giant batteries which can make a big difference if you have solar or wind power in locations. Now there's quite a bit of technology to go yet, part of it is how you sequester the by-products, how do you get the carbon back into the ground afterwards. SIMON But you might not even get the opportunity to might you, because I mean you're going to need the Greens support for this and the Greens have ruled out coal as a bottom line. TREVOR Well I think coal, any major use of coal is quite a few years away yet, and certainly continuing to research coal both in New Zealand and internationally will occur. I mean this is policy which is quite a few years out yet. SIMON You'll almost certainly need the Greens' support though to form the next government, what would you be prepared to give them in return? TREVOR Well probably some extra policies on saving energy, I mean they have some quite strong wishes to do better insulation, to do more renewable energy and there's actually quite a coincidence in our views in those areas. SIMON Are you prepared to give Jeanette Fitzsimons the portfolio? TREVOR It's not mine to give, I mean clearly that would be a decision for the Prime Minister. SIMON Would you be prepared to back it? TREVOR I'm finding energy a really interesting portfolio at the moment. SIMON Would you be prepared to back Jeanette Fitzsimons if the Greens made it a condition? TREVOR It's not up to me to get involved in what's conditional or what's not conditional. I can't imagine them saying that’s a bottom line though. SIMON Which Green policies would you be prepared to incorporate in the policy? TREVOR Well clearly there are a lot of energy savings, energy efficiency, use of renewables, there are a number of areas there where there's not a lot of difference between our policies. SIMON Let's move on to the comments you’ve made in the last couple of days that have attracted so much interest and very shortly we'll bring in National's Deputy Leader Gerry Brownlee. Do you resile from your comments that Don Brash and National are talking instruction from America? TREVOR Well as long as you don’t interpret that as saying they're taking it from the administration. Make it very clear, in my comments on Thursday I was asked did I mean the administration or not, but what I did do is I quoted Don Brash and he said on our nuclear free status – what he said is 'the likelihood is that if we put a proposal to the Americans which they find acceptable we would then seek a referendum for any change in the law' – and I made the point that New Zealanders value sovereignty, that the nuclear free policy was an important part of our national identity. SIMON You're running away from allegations concerning the administration because you said that do we want foreign policy made in Washington not Wellington, and that is a very clear indication that you believe in administration as an influence. TREVOR No I was asked, I was asked did I mean the Bush administration and I said no, what I did was quote him – Don Brash said he would put a proposal to the Americans before he put it to the New Zealand population and I just think that is absolutely the wrong way around. I think in New Zealand we like to make our own foreign policy rather than have it checked off by people overseas. SIMON You said – in fact John Armstrong said in the Herald yesterday the onus is on you to come up with incriminating links between the National Party and the US administration. Where is the evidence? I mean you’ve been talking around this but where is the evidence? TREVOR We'll continue to have discussions on this. I think it is fair to say that on Thursday I stepped into a foreign policy that as education spokesperson I probably shouldn’t have, you know the forward and the backs knocking it on again and that was not useful, but this is a developing story. SIMON So you regret your statements? TREVOR I regret knocking the ball on yes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GERRY BROWNLEE, Deputy Leader, National Party SIMON Well perhaps you can clear up some of the issues that may have arisen out of this, the accusations that surround the National Party, would a National government send troops to Iraq if it were clear that would improve our relations with the US? GERRY Oh any decisions that we make on foreign policy will be made in the best interests of New Zealand and look you know all these hypothetical sort of positions… SIMON Well rule out one of they hypotheticals, you said most of your funding comes from here, do you receive funding from offshore yes or no? GERRY Well I don’t know I'm a politician. SIMON You're Deputy Leader of the party. GERRY That’s right and we keep a very strict separation between the politicians and the … SIMON So you don’t know where the funding comes from? So you're saying you don’t know where the funding comes from? GERRY I know where our funding comes from insomuch as I'm aware that the vast majority of it, the overwhelming majority of it comes from within this country. SIMON Okay but you don’t know if any or where it comes from overseas, is that what you're saying? GERRY Well look the Labour Party of course has said they get half a million dollars from some chap in Sydney. I can't rule out that we don’t have some expats living in other parts of the world who make a donation to the National Party. SIMON So you're not in a position to deny Mr Mallard's statements then? GERRY I'm in a position to deny that we have any outside influence on our policy making and that’s the nub of Mr Mallard's scurrilous allegations, and I'll tell you what, when you're in trouble and you can't defend your own position you fling mud. Trevor Mallard's just shown why he's in trouble and why he has to fling a bit of mud. SIMON Well one way for you to end this speculation would be to rule out any changes to our nuclear free legislation, can you categorically rule out the possibility that the National government will make changes to that nuclear free legislation? GERRY I can rule out the possibility of any change to that legislation without reference to voters in this country. SIMON Mr Mallard your response. TREVOR Well I think my response goes back to the essential point that was made before and that is that Don Brash has said before voters in New Zealand have a chance to make a decision he'll get it ticked off by a foreign power. GERRY Oh Trevor that’s a load of rubbish. TREVOR No that is what Don Brash said, that he would put the proposal to the Americans before the New Zealanders and I think we do have to think about. We have to think about whether New Zealanders do value sovereignty, whether the nuclear free policy is part of our identity, and whether we really want it and both Don Brash and Gerry Brownlee have refused to say even what the process would be for their change. SIMON You can't back up your assertions with hard evidence, Mr Brownlee. You can't back up any knowledge of where the offshore funding comes from. SIMON You do have some evidence you're saying. You haven’t to date, are you saying you’ve got – have you got some evidence. TREVOR Just hang about and wait. SIMON So you have got some evidence. TREVOR Just hang about and wait. SIMON It's a very simple question, yes or no, have you got some evidence. TREVOR I think that this area is going to be interesting over a period of time. SIMON Evidence yes or no. TREVOR Evidence is coming. SIMON Do you believe that Mr Brownlee? TREVOR No, look tell him to put it on the table. It'll be another gathering of bits and pieces here and there, circumstantial stuff, means absolutely nothing, we are not influenced by any overseas organisation, by any person living offshore, we are a party that very much values the fact that we are a mass membership party supported by many tens of thousands of New Zealanders. The Labour government are doing this because they cannot win on the issues, they're in deep trouble, your interviews earlier showed the sort of trouble they're in and the sooner we get to a point where people start focusing on issues the better, and I would just like Mr Mallard to do exactly that. TREVOR Okay what I'm really happy to do is to say in the Labour Party we don’t use the approach that Gerry Brownlee and his party do and that is that they hide their donations through trust funds. I think transparency in campaign contributions is something which is really important and in that way you do know that - that’s why the Glen donation was made obvious because we didn’t try and hide it away. SIMON And you will have some more evidence …? GERRY That is a disgraceful allegation. TREVOR Mr Brownlee you’ve just got to look at the returns that are put in by the National Party which show an enormous amount coming through… SIMON We're gonna have to wrap it up there gentlemen. GERRY No no no no, Simon one question, do trusts have to be registered in New Zealand and does the construction of those trusts have to be made public, the answer's yes, it's through the Ministry so to suggest there's something illegal going on it's just another bit of dirt from Trevor Mallard. TREVOR Happy to answer it, the trusts have to be set up in New Zealand but where their money comes from doesn’t have to be shown and that is the case. SIMON Okay we'll have to leave it there and we'll look forward to evidence from both of you to back up assertions in future.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SIMON Welcome back, joining us are our guest commentators Kathryn Ryan and Neville Gibson with reaction to what Trevor Mallard and perhaps Gerry Brownlee had to say. Attack politics backfiring. KATHRYN RYAN – Political Editor, RNZ SIMON Is it purely presidential style politics in the campaign? KATHRYN Well presidential style … SIMON Don Brash versus Helen Clark? KATHRYN Don Brash against Helen Clark is the most important aspect of it, but it is also one government versus another government, and what they see is National is riding high on a feel good just weeks out from an election, they are saying we need to find the dints, we need to expose things, we need to create doubts, if they do not damage National and put doubts in voters' minds they are potentially heading for an election loss. SIMON Neville is this the right way for them to do it? NEVILLE GIBSON – Editor, National Business Review KATHRYN That is the risk of the backfire. If you get it wrong then the public turns off you even more, but if you look back to the Australian election where Howard went after Mark Latham, if you look back even to the United States election where there was the one step removed attack from the administration from the Republicans, one step removed attack on John Kerry, I think Labour's decided if they do not deflate this balloon then they are in serious trouble. Then you come down to the quality of the tactics and hammering away on issues like what the US would have done in Iraq where Don Brash has floundered in many of his answers what National would have done, that’s all well and good but where Mr Mallard got it wrong was by going out with a wild story that he could not substantiate and that then turned the attention back on him and everyone was talking about smear tactics and everything else and whether he could back up, whether he'd gone too far or could back up what he was going to say. So it's a question of if you're gonna run the strategy that’s one thing but you’ve gotta get it right. SIMON Yeah and you’ve gotta stay on message too. What about coming to the tertiary education sector, he had a fair bit to say there? NEVILLE Well they revealed that they have a long time a conflicting strategy goes back to Minister Mahare, they don’t know whether they're going to go for elite education like sport where you put the resources in where it's gonna count, or whether you go for the massificatiion where everybody gets an education, degrees for everybody, you know quality no object and they realise that’s not right, but you can't run both strategies at the same time and I think they’ve lost the strategic position there and they lost it some time ago, Mahary hasn’t been really forcing that, education sector like the health sector's full of people that want to grab every resource going and to sort them out is a nightmare and it's too late now, I mean this should have been done three or four years ago. There's no question that what Trevor was saying was the correct way to go, but it's gonna take too long to turn the ship around. KATHRYN And that is the bottom line Simon. I mean they did realise back in 2003 that they had problems but here we are two years later on the verge of an election with what appears like a last minute rescue job and there's no doubt that that bureaucracy has been not out of control but clearly not under control either as far as the government is concerned, and it has left it looking like it has been very slow and that these are last minute measures to a problem that was spotted two years ago at least. SIMON The bureaucracy of course the Secretary of Education Howard Fancy has come in for a bit of attention but … KATHRYN Well so has everyone else. SIMON Mr Mallard seems to have full confidence in him despite the State Services Commission report. NEVILLE I spose he's got no real alternative that’s the problem and I mean that report is damning and if you did one on the tertiary sector, then of course there's some powerful groups that didn’t come under that State Services report which of course is the Vice Chancellor's Committee and the universities themselves I mean who have so far managed to stay above the fray but they're just as guilty as everyone else. SIMON Briefly energy – will the Greens be determining our energy policy? KATHRYN Well no they can't determine the energy policy, and actually if you go back to when Pete Hodgson was Minister he was making clear that coal had to be in the mix and also the idea of Greens and bottom lines if there's one message we've been getting for some months certainly in Wellington it’s that bottom lines are off the agenda for this election. So no that will be a point of negotiation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SIMON Last week on Agenda we asked whether New Zealand could become a terrorist target. After the programme we were approached by a Muslim viewer who said he has personally faced radical, banned "Muslim terror groups" such as the Wahhabi, Hizb Ut-Tahrir movement and the Al Haramain Foundation in New Zealand. These groups have been condemned as terrorist organizations by the United Nations and many Western governments. I spoke with Shahin Soltanian, the past President of Auckland University’s Islamic societies, earlier this week SIMON Last week on Agenda, Ahmed Zaoui and Javed Khan said there were no Muslim extremists in New Zealand, do you agree with them? SHAHIN Oh no I disagree with that. I disagree especially with Mr Javed Khan’s statement that there was no sympathy for Al Haramain or even other groups such as Hizb Ut-Tahrir in New Zealand. There was and there still is sympathy with those groups. SIMON How much sympathy? SHAHIN Well they had representatives here before and they were well accepted in the university specifically. And that basically they were allowed to preach and distribute books up to as recent as last year. The ideology they presented, the ideology of violence was well accepted by many. SIMON How many turned up to their meetings? SHAHIN In terms of their sermons they used to give at least thirty. SIMON Have you seen any evidence of radical Islamic organizations in Auckland this year? SHAHIN I have seen Hizb Ut- Tahrir propaganda. The Hizb Ut- Tahrir is an organization which has been termed radical in Britain, it has been banned from the university. SIMON This is a group that’s promoting violence against the West? SHAHIN Yes it does. It promotes violence in general. SIMON A number of radical groups have attended the university and given lectures. How have they been received? Al Haramain for instance? SHAHIN Yes. The majority of Sunni students on campus received their representative Majhdi and attended his lectures and attended meetings by him. He was sent here from Al Haramain specifically for activities within the university. I’m not sure if he’s still here or not. SIMON The Wahhabi movement’s also been represented here at the university, hasn’t it? SHAHIN Yes. Books by the Muhammed ibn Abd al Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement have been distributed and they still are currently present and available in the university. SIMON What has been the essence of both the Wahhabi message, and the Al Haramain message to the university? SHAHIN They think that suicide bombing is justified, for example, and that killing certain people who they think are infidels are justified. Whether that be non-Muslims or Shia Muslims. SIMON The radical organizations that visited here, you said they left material. What sort of material? SHAHIN Basically material by the Al Haramain foundation and contact details for Al Haramain Foundation. SIMON Is radical propaganda being spread in New Zealand- how? SHAHIN In terms of both writing, both through the internet and writing and of course you have the human resources where individuals advocate violence. SIMON How’s it being spread through the internet? SHAHIN There are certain news groups and forums where groups’ ideas of radical groups such as Hizb Ut-Tahrir and Al Haramain are being sent to, for example university students. Transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd and may contain errors. They should be checked against a taped copy of the programme to ensure accuracy.
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