Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

Last week ended with a bizarre situation where Labour effectively came out against a pay rise for teachers. They did this because that’s what the unions wanted. And what the unions want, the unions usually get. Union strategy 101 is getting everyone who’s not a member to become one. The tactic is peer pressure. If you can deprive non‑union members of a pay rise while dragging out pay negotiations, that’s leverage. Labour last week got rid of Willow‑Jean Prime, who scored an F in the portfolio. Ginny Anderson has been lumped with it at a time when National is seen, across a bunch of polls this term, to be either better or at least as good as Labour on education. Which is saying something. Like health, it’s usually the purview of the left. But something’s shifted, and Ginny probably needs to take a good, hard look at which battles she blindly follows her comrades into. Charter schools are another example. I was reading at the weekend about the breadth of subjects and students these schools cater to: seven Māori