Today there are more than 1000 students and close on 200 staff whose lives have been

wrecked by a
short sighted and cynical politically motivated decision. Taratahi Institute of Agriculture was on the
verge of celebrating 100 years of operation.

While there has been much talk in the community about the need for something to replace Taratahi,
most of that talk is centred on what leaders are calling the “future.”

It is understandable that they take this position - It means they can “start afresh.”

It also means, they too will be doomed to fail.

There are two fundamental problems with the future success of primary sector vocational training.

 The market - the rural sector needs different farmers than they did a decade ago and the job
market is full – people can get good jobs without training.
 The government - both the present and the past governments never really understood the
sector, the cost of training or really got to grips with the woeful performance of the Tertiary
Education Commission - the body that decides what will be funded and how.

This became patently evident when I first became involved with Taratahi, I suggested that they get
into training beekeepers, which as it turns out has been lucrative. The process for actually delivering
beekeeping courses took months - TEC should be geared up alongside NZQA to get ahead of
industry demand but it doesn’t – they lag at least a year, sometimes a lot longer.

TEC is without a doubt one of the most bureaucratic organisations I have ever interacted with and I
have worked with a few.

It has not served the country and its governments well – and I applaud this current government for
looking to overhaul the tertiary sector, but I condemn the for the short sightedness about how best
that overhaul is carried out.

If the TEC and its current administration survive the next year, then this government will have failed
the sector.

The government’s decision not to fund Taratahi was based on advice from TEC. Behind closed doors
with no chance for Taratahi to talk direct to the Ministers involved.

So, they don’t even know what was presented – but the $30m touted by some as what was required
for the organisation to continue is wrong. $5million was what they needed – pretty much the same
amount they had paid back of the previous administrations legacy debt.

We are now in a situation where students lives are in some cases wrecked, a pipeline of workers for
the industry is disrupted and some extraordinary staff who have taken Taratahi from a wounded
dying incoherent organisation to one where students were treated like adults, success rates were up
and farms performed in the top 25% of farms in NZ , have lost their jobs.

Taratahi’s team had also grown the non-state funded side of the business considerably to the point
where it was to return $4m in the coming year. Student enrolments were also up for the coming
year. And I would bet my life on them getting back their NZQA EER ( external evaluation review)
accreditation which means they could take international students again.

The organisation that Arthur Graves and his team took on was a woeful antiquated system less
mess.
For the first six months I was there – every day was a new day of discovering another hole in a very
leaky ship. But with strong staff - it was turned around.

So, when Taratahi finally got its books straight, which took till earlier this year - they could finally tell
TEC exactly the cost of training students, who come with far greater needs, and they could present
TEC with a very realistic picture of what was needed to fund the education of our future farmers and
rural sector workers.

They asked for $5m.

And they also presented rigorous evidence to TEC that the difference in what they were funded
and what the farms subsidised was about $6k per student.

They pleaded the case for a rethink on funding levels for primary sector tertiary education on that
fact based basis.

You would think that the TEC would have said to the Ministers that it was time to forgo the
albatross of the legacy debt Taratahi carried. – After all the Govt had bailed out other institutions
like Westland polytechnic to the tune of $33m.

On all other fronts Taratahi was doing well.

TEC in my opinion has sought to deflect criticism away from themselves. After all, Taratahi geared
up for students based on TEC forecasting - which was like everything else they do, a little bit slow to
pick up on the real trends which was downwards.

Coupled with that TEC got Taratahi to pick up the students from other failed organisations with no
increase in funding.

So, while I hear the call from community leaders to look forward - they will not succeed unless there
is a deep analysis of Taratahi.

It will provide the answers for the future. It is sad that the Labour coalition didn’t put Taratahi on
notice for 6 months while they completed their review and redesign of the sector - which definitely
needs to happen, and then required Taratahi to make the changes it needed at that point.

That was largely the 11th hour solution that was put before the government which was rejected.

While the Labour coalition dealt the death blow to Taratahi it is spinning it that it was Nationals
fault that they had to kill it .

While the Nat did not act fast enough to sort out the sector it must be remembered their advice
came from the TEC.

Its no secret they were unhappy with the quality of advice they got from TEC.

The Labour coalition must own the decision to kill off Taratahi and the ugly aftermath it has created
including the disruption to the lives of literally thousands of people and around $10m to the
Wairarapa community on its own.

It was a cowardly decision and ultimately a costly one as any new “Taratahi” will be costly to
rebuild from scratch.

The Labour coalition must now ask some hard questions of TEC.

My predictions is it will be found wanting.

So what of the future?

If the community leaders consign all that has been learnt and achieved by Taratahi in two and a half
short years, then they will be condemned to creating yet another failure and snub some of the best
educationalists in the industry.

What we need to see is Taratahi rise again in the next few months – underpinned by all the good
systems and knowledge built up in the last two years, within a newly framed tertiary education
sector with the required funding levels. With all that in place it will become an enduring engine room
for primary sector talent development.

Note - Tina Nixon is an independent consultant - who was employed Taratahi to provide strategic
communications advice until Dec 2017 and assisted with advice leading up to liquidation.

She has sought no input for this column from either former staff or board members and is still owed
money by Taratahi.