I had a very pleasant night last night at the Tertiary Education Union conference dinner.  This was the first conference of the combined University and Polytechnic staff union, and therefore was a pretty special occasion.  Folk at the dinner were in good spirits, and I spotted a range of people from across the education sector as well as fellow MP Carol Beaumont. I also understand new Green MP to be Dave Clendon was there, though I did not get to say hello.

The talk of the dinner was the appearance at the conference earlier in the day by Education Minister Anne Tolley.  For obvious reasons the Minister is not flavour of the month with tertiary staff with funding cuts in the Budget, no move on the cap for EFTS, and in the Polytechnic sector the legislation before the House that will gut Polytechnic Councils.  The Minister was no doubt expecting a rowdy reception. The reality could not have been more different.

Delegates told me that after the Minister delivered a fairly turgid speech that offered little in the way of vision and much in the way cliches, there was total and complete silence.  All those I spoke with said it was not planned. They were just so underwhelmed with the Minister’s effort that no one felt moved to clap. You could have heard a pin drop.

As the Minster did not have “time” for questions, a TEU representative gave a stirring response to the Minister’s speech, followed by a waiata.  In this case the waiata was Solidarity Forever.  Apparently this was not the Minister’s cup of tea as she left during the singing.

The TEU delegates I spoke to would rather have had some engagement with the Minister, but I think they probably got their message across in any case.