Joyce on The Nation

The National had it première episode today, interviewing Steven Joyce. They don’t have TV3 on Bintan Island, but I have got a copy of the transcript, which is interesting:

DUNCAN I mean Phil Goff and the Labour Party attacked you this week and they quoted Groucho Marx saying ‘of you these are my principles and if you don’t like them I have others’. I mean that’s the argument about you that you don’t stand for anything except the popularity in the polls.

STEVEN Oh I don’t think that’s fair, I mean I’ve got some pretty – you know some views of my own which are built from my background and from my family background, my father was a small businessman and I started out as a small businessman, and we grew it a bit, but those things have always been in my background but at the same time politics is about actually what people want you to do, and what people are prepared to accept.

I like the “started out as a small businessman”, which is correct, and rather modest.

STEVEN Well currently the polytech sector next year will lose about 70 million dollars across the sector from what it’s had previously, so that was announced in Budget 2009, the polytechs are aware of that, they’re working through that, we’ve don’t a lot of work on polytech governance, the next couple of weeks I’ll be announcing 80 new government appointments to polytech councils, and what I’m seeing is somebody new in the portfolio, is that the people in polytechs are being very reasonable, they understand what the challenges are and certainly in this last 12 month period, 2009, they’ve responded by improving the performance of those polytechs.

Normally appointments are staggered, but of course under the new governance model, there are 80 initial appointments to be made. It will be interesting to see who gets appointed.

DUNCAN Just on to your portfolio, another portfolio KiwiRail is it true that they want about a billion dollars or perhaps more over ten years from the government?

STEVEN I think they’d take as much as we could give them.

Heh. So true.

DUNCAN Do you want KiwiRail, do you want to hang on to it?

STEVEN Oh look I think the price that was paid by the previous government, and I’ve said it before, it was nuts, it was over the top, and what we have said we’d make the best of it, it’s an asset that is a sunk economic asset for New Zealand, the options are not do something with it and watch it run down and fall to bits over time, the other option given we’ve got a lot of freight growth coming over the next 20 years, is to put some investment in, but we’ve gotta be very careful about the way we do it.

We can’t sell it, as no one would buy it!

DUNCAN We understand that Jim Bolger won’t be rolled over as the Chairman of KiwiRail from June, is that correct?

STEVEN The governance of KiwiRail is the responsibility for my good friend Mr Power, but we are looking at refreshing the governance.

DUNCAN So Jim Bolger will be removed as Chairman?

STEVEN My understanding is that we’re looking at renewing the governance but that’s for Simon to announce.

That sounds like curtains for Jim, to me.

DUNCAN Do you want to be the Prime Minister?

STEVEN No.

DUNCAN Do you want to be a Finance Minister?

STEVEN No.

Well that is pretty concise.

Then there was the panel with Stephen Parker, Deborah Hill-Cone and Vernon Small. I am glad to see that the panel on The Nation is not just talking heads like on Q+A, but actually get to interview the guest.

I also like the fact that the panelists are basically journalists or political commentators, rather than other politicians. It annoys me when I see the PM get interview on Q+A, and the co-leader of the Green Party is a panelist reviewing what he said.

I am a fan of Q+A, but have always said I don’t like the way they have done the panel.

STEVEN Well I worry about some of the level 1 to 3 courses, which are the lower level courses where perhaps as many as 100 people are enrolled at the start of the year and yet somehow at the end of the year or the end of the course there’s only 30 left, and you pay 100% up front and some institutions are brilliant with pastoral care, others see it not really as their role, i.e. you know our job is to teach them and if they don’t turn up that’s their problem, and I think we’d like to see them take a bit more interest in the pastoral care, those that aren’t doing so.

I never realised the non completion rate was so high for so many courses.