Te Pukenga needs accountability, not teflon suits

Merran Davis is the former chief executive of Unitec, former deputy chief executive for transformation and transition at Te Pūkenga, and is currently a business owner and education transformation consultant.

OPINION: 2022 has been another year of turmoil for Te Pūkenga.

The appointments to the new Te Pūkenga executive, including former council member Peter Winder as the chief executive, demonstrate that despite spending $120 million and three years to not meet the minister's expectations, chairperson Murray Strong, the 12 council members and Winder continue on more influential and powerful than ever under the current government regime.

Rearranging the deckchairs may be politically expedient but will not fix the problem.

Allowing the same people to appoint a new executive leadership structure to replace the first one they appointed then paid out to leave, is a serious failure of oversight and risk management.

READ MORE: * Te Pūkenga won't explain why three deputy CEOs had their contracts cut by 9 months * Eight $200k-a-year executives wanted at Te Pūkenga, despite need to cut $35m from budget

When I called on Minister Chris Hipkins to appoint a commissioner, I said I was concerned they would appoint people like themselves. They did and worse – they appointed themselves into a growing echo chamber of dysfunction.

It is galling people can perform so poorly, as multiple public reports have shown, yet not be held to account.

Particularly those who have had multiple lucrative public sector appointments in education and local government contexts and built their reputations on them.

Despite their close involvement with all work streams and the future direction, as the website states in black and white, sacking them would undermine the credibility of their current and previous engagements, as well as raise serious questions about the minister's judgment and reform agenda.

With my early involvement with the key players as the chief executive of Unitec, and then inside the establishment of Te Pūkenga as deputy chief executive for transformation and transition, I experienced many situations which were not as transparent as people would expect from our public sector.

It is ironic that Minister Hipkins sacked the council of Unitec and appointed Murray Strong as commissioner in 2018 due to financial challenges and a failed transformation, challenges of a much smaller scale than those faced by Te Pūkenga.

From senior recruitments made without a robust process, to the disastrous shoulder tapping for a chief executive, preferential secondments, exit packages, and now the current appointments to the top jobs, the HR practices at Te Pūkenga do not stand up to scrutiny.

It is no accident that there was limited educational leadership at the governance or leadership level and a glaring absence of real commercial, entrepreneurial, or transformational expertise, as well as authentic Māori partnership and Pacific involvement.

Educational leadership is much more than bureaucratic rationalisation, restructuring and asset management.

Quality, innovation, and support for those on the front line of delivery are key to great learner and community outcomes.

To be successful, Te Pūkenga needs strong governance and leadership, not people in Teflon suits who get multiple chances to make major mistakes while the sector continues to suffer.

In reading the Te Pūkenga statement on Winder's appointment to chief executive, where Strong praises Winder for his reset and realignment work, it would be easy to forget why such work was needed when the organisation is hardly out of the starting gates.

There is a very high human and financial cost to failed transformation which never recovers through subsequent fixes and needs significant additional resources.

With cynicism at an all-time high and confidence an all-time low in the sector, Minister Hipkins must acknowledge he got it wrong and get different people around the table, or his legacy will be the politician who failed vocational education and New Zealand for generations to come.