The Week in Politics: Sir John Key - still a powerful presence

Analysis: Sir John Key has a powerful presence at National's annual conference, the government's latest maths initiative runs into controversy over student assessment, Health NZ's new supremo warns it could go broke and Shane Jones shakes up the energy market.

National Party members felt the strong presence of former Prime minister Sir John Key at their annual conference in Auckland at the weekend.

The difference between National's poll ratings and its supremacy during the Key years and now was drawn out by the media.

"The biggest reminder of National's current diluted power was in the room: former PM Sir John Key, who managed to get by for three terms without needing a coalition or having to include smaller parties in his Cabinet," the Herald's political editor Claire Trevett said. "It is his polling figures the party now hopes to build back - in the mid-40s."

In contrast, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon hasn't managed to get National past the 40 percent mark, and it's been stuck on around 38 percent since the election.

Stuff's Thomas Manch said the legacy of the Key era - nine years of electoral success - literally lingered in the room.

"Key was feted by the members, a magnet for selfie-seekers, the most celebrated speaker who took the stage."

Herald columnist Simon Wilson - who was at the conference - said that to National, Key had become "a kind of cross between a saint and a mascot".

Key spoke to RNZ at the conference and was generous with his comments about Luxon.

"I think he is growing into the role and that's natural," Key said. "I know when I took over the job in 2008 I think by this time, mid-2009, I was doing better and frankly by the middle of 2016 I obviously understood how it worked."

On Luxon's personal popularity, which is far below the heights Key's reached, he said he believed the public would like him when they got to know him.

That's what Luxon's supporters have been saying since he became leader of the party.

Luxon's keynote speech was tailored for the party faithful, as these events always are. It was packed with success stories, absolute determination to get things done and get the country back on track - which was the conference slogan.

Maths curriculum changes divide

He announced the policy centrepiece of the conference - the government's decision to bring forward by a year the introduction of the new structural maths curriculum for year 0-8 students which will now start at the beginning of the first term in 2025.

It was being rushed through, he said, because of new and "appalling" data which showed just 22 percent of Year 8 students had reached the maths performance benchmark.

"There's no way to describe those results as anything other than a total system failure," Luxon said.

According to Stuff, data from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study showed 22 percent were at or above curriculum level, 15 percent were less than one year below the level and 63 percent more than one year below it.

Among Māori students, 12 percent were where they should be, 10 percent less than a year behind and 77 percent more than a year behind.

"We don't have time to muck around here," Luxon said before Education Minister Erica Stanford took the stage.

The Herald's Trevett said it was the perfect party conference announcement.

"It's a stock political move - highlight some very bad numbers (especially if they can be pinned to the previous government), wait for the gasps of horror and then announce the fix.

"And it reinforced Luxon's image as 'Action Man', putting some urgency into things. His aim at the conference was to show members that he was not all talk when it came to his promises of a 'turnaround' and delivery."

Stanford took over to explain the detail and said $20 million would be put into extra tuition for teacher development.

The old curriculum which was being replaced was too vague and didn't include specific benchmarks, she said.

Stanford is a strong minister on top of her portfolio, and she was soon to be tested. Although the statistics were undeniably awful, the primary teachers union NZEI said there was concern about the rapid pace of change in the maths curriculum and the short time for training teachers.

It said there was no silver bullet for teaching and the short timeframes would put further strain on the workforce. The union also didn't think $20 million was going to be enough taking into account the extent of the training it would need to cover.

Then Labour began picking the data apart. 'Government shifting the goalposts on maths assessment - Labour' was the headline on an RNZ report.

"Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the government was not using accurate data," the report said and quoted Hipkins: 'It's a bit like moving the goalposts after the kids have already kicked the ball.'"

Hipkins said the government was using data that didn't have any historical comparators.

"We can't benchmark that against anything because it's literally data that's been made up from assessing kids against a standard that they haven't been taught."

This was getting complicated, and the RNZ report quoted Aotearoa Educators Collective spokesperson Prof Jodie Hunter explaining it.

"The original implementation of the refreshed curriculum was to begin in 2026, with a logical expectation that, as students moved through the school years, their maths achievement would be advancing," she said.

"We question the use of data based on assessments where student tasks are based on a curriculum that is not being taught."

Luxon denied any shifting of goalposts.

"The assessment moved at the end of last year to be in-year, looking at Year 8 versus a multi-year band," he said. "What we're focused on is making sure we fix the problem. Whether its 45 percent or whether it's 22 percent, we've got a problem in maths."

Stanford was questioned in Parliament about the data, and became frustrated when she had to explain the same thing several times. She told opposition MPs the data had always been "out there" but it had been in multi-year bands and only now had been worked out in single year terms.

Before this becomes really tedious: Labour and the teachers are saying the education "crisis" isn't as bad as the government made out, and it used the data the way it did so it could tell the conference it was fixing something really serious.

Luxon and Stanford say the situation is real and it's bad, whatever interpretation is put on the data. Luxon said: "We see… four out of five are actually not at the standard they need to be to take on high schools, that's a big problem."

Power plays

Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones caused a flurry of excitement this week when he told Morning Report the government was exploring the option of intervening in the electricity market to force major energy generators to cut their prices.

RNZ had reported wholesale power prices doubled in the past three weeks, in part because hydro lake storage was only 47 percent of what it normally was at this time of year.

Some major users said soaring prices were putting their viability at risk, and two timber mills warned they were considering closing.

Jones said the government needed to re-engage with the sector.

"The gentailers no longer operate in New Zealand in a way that enhances competitiveness, number one," he said. "Number two, the gentailers no longer operate in a vein that boosts or gives greater primacy to the greater interests."

He said there were provisions under existing electricity legislation that enabled the Crown to use a code of conduct which had legal force to change their behaviour.

"For a long time I've felt there are some significant deficiencies in the actual structural makeup of our wholesale energy market," Jones said.

"The minister of finance [Nicola Willis] along with the minister of energy [Simeon Brown] are getting some urgent work done to look at what short-term measures we can take if indeed there are some deeper structural failings in the rules and regulations governing the energy market."

Victoria University economist Geoff Bertram said the root cause was the design of the market.

"The market is doing exactly what it was set up to do, which is to get high prices and high profits at times of scarcity," he said.

"This is a market where scarcity goes straight through to profiteering."

Bertram said the blame was not just on gentailers but on Parliament as well, which passed the legislation. Governments over the years had systematically failed to fix the problem.

Meridian Energy and Genesis declined to comment and a reply was being sought from Mercury, RNZ reported.

It seemed odd that it was Jones, an associate minister, and not the minister himself who was going public with the problem.

"New Zealand First is playing to its constituency as it runs political rings around its coalition partners over the electricity crisis," said Richard Harman on his Politik website.

When Brown did comment, he confirmed he had been meeting with sector stakeholders and had asked the Electricity Authority to regularly publish power data to ensure the power companies were not price gouging, RNZ reported.

Pass marks

The Herald this week published Audrey Young's Cabinet report card, running the ruler over ministers' performances. With the exception of Melissa Lee, they've done rather well.

Luxon gets eight out of 10 for being a strong manager of Cabinet and setting high performance standards. His deputy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis, is another eight for being "superb at managing the politics" and delivering on tax cuts.

At the top are three nines, high praise from Young.

They are Stanford for being on top of her brief, being one of the best-prepared ministers, holding two big portfolios (education and immigration) and clearly explaining policy.

Chris Bishop is another nine. Young thinks the housing and infrastructure minister is "one of the busiest and brightest" in Cabinet and treats his job with urgency. "A model to other ministers," she said.

The third top scorer is transport, energy and local government minister Simeon Brown. He's turning out to be the government's most populous minister, Young said. "Road cones, potholes, motorways and speed limits… highly combative in the House, effective communicator outside it."

At the bottom of the heap, Melissa Lee scores a miserable three. "Had six years in opposition to develop a cohesive media policy but didn't. Wasn't ready when a crisis struck and was stripped of media and communications and demoted," Young said.

Finances in poor health

Lester Levy, the newly appointed commissioner in sole charge of Health NZ, said this week its finances were worse than he had thought.

He told Nine to Noon changes needed to happen quickly or the government's biggest agency faced going broke.

"For us this is not a marathon, it's a sprint," he said. "We have to move really quickly to secure our financial position as quickly as possible in order to overcome this particular cashflow issue that is hanging over us."

Levy's task is to fix an estimated $1.4 billion budget blowout, a shortage of clinicians, overworked and burnt-out staff and provinces and regions without adequate cover.

He has said he sees one of his main tasks as improving wait times.

Critics have said it's an impossible task for one man, and there's no way spending can be cut without it impacting on the services Levy wants to enhance.

*Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament's press gallery, 22 years as NZPA's political editor and seven as Parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire.