The Government Will Frame Teachers as Greedy

by Rebecca Thomas

Public service commissioner Sir Brian Roche. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

(A Follow-Up to “Why Our Nation’s Carers Are Striking”)

We already know the line they’ll use.

Teachers will be painted as greedy.

The government will stand in front of microphones, point to billion-dollar figures, and remind us of fiscal envelopes and GDP downturns.

Responsible, they’ll say. Realistic.

But notice what they aren’t saying. Not once have they front-footed the classroom concerns.

Not once have they begun a negotiation by naming the chaos of teaching complex grammar to children in meltdown, the pressure of ticking curriculum boxes while kids flip tables, or the principals scraping for anyone to stand in front of a class.

And there is a reason for that silence. 

Because if the story is told through classrooms, the public sees it for what it is.

The real classroom landscape

It doesn’t take much to find the truth of what is happening in our classrooms. There is a reason our principals, support staff, and teachers are standing together. They see the problems upfront and personal — and all of it comes from the love and desire to do right by our children.

It isn’t easy to teach the “science of learning” content the government has declared gospel over the science of trauma and neuroscience. Teachers are asked to drill predicates and complex sentences to children who flip tables, cry, or shut down. Daily classroom life becomes a battle of wills.

The teacher battles to push through content, terrified their students won’t be “at curriculum level.” Meanwhile, ERO arrives to judge attendance and achievement data. Principals can’t even find relievers to hold the fort — not even a warm body. They lean heavily on LATs, who do their best, but are underpaid, underprepared, and unable to meet kids where they are.

And the kids?

They’re screaming that this closed system doesn’t fit. That the adults don’t understand their struggles. None of them plan to come to school “naughty.” They simply find the curriculum unattainable and unresponsive.

And the teachers?

They are caught in the middle — torn between what they know their students need and what they are forced to deliver. These are the working conditions the media and the Minister refuse to talk about. Instead, they make it all about pay — and paint teachers as greedy.

For the first time, principals, teachers, and support staff are standing together. They are paid differently. They are funded differently. They are recognised differently. Yet they have reached the same breaking point.

That unity tells us something crucial: this strike is not just about salaries. It is about whether schools can still function as places of care and learning.

By sending Brian Roche to front the media instead of Erica Stanford, the government is already signalling how it wants this story told. Roche does not talk about overcrowded classrooms or children waiting months for support. He talks about $1.7 billion, about affordability, about what is “realistic.”

Notice the choreography.

Roche doesn’t just front the media — he spells out the offer. That’s not negotiation.

He writes directly to school boards, bypassing teachers themselves, as if to shore up public sympathy and cast schools as grateful recipients of government generosity. And when teachers respond with a long strike notice, that too will be weaponised: spun as reckless disruption rather than what it is — a profession signalling that piecemeal fixes will no longer do.

This is the narrative being built: teachers are greedy, the government is responsible, and any strike action is a threat rather than a cry for survival.

But this is a mirage. The silence on classrooms, the avoidance of workload and support conditions, is deliberate. Because once those truths are spoken aloud, the fiscal story collapses.

Where is the Minister?

The Minister of Education should be issuing statements directly to the unions — recognising their mandate, acknowledging the classroom conditions teachers are facing, and signalling a willingness to negotiate in good faith. Though, if past comments are anything to go by, we might only hear the familiar refrain — that teachers should “just be doing their job.”

Instead, we see letters sent to school boards. That’s not leadership. That’s bypassing the very people who carry the system every day. It undermines collective bargaining and pits schools against their own teachers, sowing division where unity is most needed.

If this government truly wanted resolution, the Minister herself would be speaking to teachers — not outsourcing the conversation to a commissioner.

The real cost

When Roche says “$864 million,” he wants you to imagine excess. What he doesn’t say is what happens if teachers stop turning up.

The true cost is classrooms without kaiako. Parents forced to miss work because schools cannot staff classes. Tamariki missing weeks of consistent learning. Communities bearing the stress.

The true cost is our teachers leaving — not for another profession here, but for Australia. Across the Tasman, teachers earn $10,000–$20,000 more, with relocation support and better working conditions. Every teacher we lose widens the 750-strong primary shortage already choking our schools.

And what of those who come here? Teachers who spend thousands on visas, flights, registration, and resettlement, only to earn less than they could in their home country.

They leave again, and the churn continues.

This is not just a pay fight. It’s about whether Aotearoa is willing to be competitive enough to attract and keep the teachers it desperately needs. When you factor in the cost of disruption, teachers leaving, recruitment drives, and lost learning, underpaying teachers is not fiscal prudence — it is economic and social self-sabotage.

So when you hear ministers say “we can’t afford it,” ask instead: what is it costing our children when we don’t?

When you read that teachers are demanding too much, remember teachers, principals, and support workers are banding together not out of greed, but because classrooms are collapsing under the weight of underinvestment.

Yes, money matters. Fair pay is justice. But the deeper truth is if we let the government define this as only about money, we lose sight of what is happening in our schools.

Teachers are not asking for luxury.

They are asking for the dignity to do their job well.

If the government will not speak that truth, then we must.