Max Bradford - Current Minister of Tertiary Education

Well good old Mad Max just executed a lomu like fend on a student protester at Canterbury University. And it was head high. He is one of the most right wing, privatising Ministers in the Shipley National Government. He's also in charge of Defence, and today the Herald said that the bill for the F16s we don't need is going to be in the region of $700M which is interesting, because with $500M we could virtually have free tertiary education. Hmm. Nice to see where his priorities are.

More on Max later, when I can remember exactly when he worked for the World Bank, and where he got his (free) MCom.

Wyatt Creech - 1996 - 1999 Minister of Education

Wyatt was Mr Bland - brought in as a safe pair of hands, especially as he was so featureless it was hard to hate him because no one could ever remember exactly what he looked like. He quietly chipped away at the tertiary sector, with his White and Green Papers, which got pretty much scrapped, and his Universal Tertiary Tuition Allowance, which was NOT a universal student allowance as the coalition had promised, but just a new name for an existing funding system for teritary institutions. Just like Winston "re-named" CHEs (Crown Health Enterprises) Hospitals. Gosh, wish I'd thought of that.

Wyatt was instrumental in the bloodless Shipley coup, and became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health as a reward. He holds Wairarapa, but I think he's going for the list this time around

More on the Creecher of the New Right, later, after exams

Lockwood Smith - 1990 - 1996 Minister of Education

Locky had a good background for the position - he wrote his thesis on an obscure bovine disease at Massey University, and was the replacement for Kiwi icon Selwyn Toogood on the school kids version of University Challenge, W3. "I've lost my faith in politicians, they all seem like game show hosts to me." This guy promised before getting into office to abolish tertiary fees. And he did. Well he said he did, so he must have. I'm sure the thousands of dollars I've been paying for the last few years weren't fees at all.

Actually he shifted the fee charging mechanism from the Government to the individual institutions, which was a smart move (politically) because it meant that a) he didn't have to resign as he pledged he would, although he always looked dodgy and b) the Government has forever since been able to turn around and say, look it's not our underfunding that causes high fees, it's just that the institutions want ot sharge you guys fees.

During his time in the office Locky was the last Minister of Education to visit the University of Auckland campus (to open the Tamaki campus) this decade, and he decided to escape studen tprotesters by climbing out a window. exactly which campus this happened at has faded into the mists of time, as every campus claims the honour as their own, but I reckon it was Canterbury, although everyone at Auckland reckons it was there. Maybe we will never know

More on Locky later too

Other Ministers I'll get to when I can

David Lange - introduced Tomorrow's Schools

This is really just an idea I had and I really felt I needed to get down before I forgot about it - just like the police one - basically in about three weeks i'll be able to come back and do some serious renovation (after exams)until then, please feel free to comment, but keep in mind the fact that i'm nowhere near finished, and I probably won't even check the spelling and layout properly.