Finally

When National announced the re-introduction of its corrupt charter schools back in May, Labour "leader" Chris Hipkins impressed nobody by refusing to commit to their immediate abolition. But now, finally, Labour seems to have discovered some principles:

Fixed-term contracts being signed for the schools are 10 years long, but former education minister Jan Tinetti told Q+A that a hypothetical future Labour administration wouldn't back down at scrapping the schools and their contracts.

"Labour has got rid of these before, and we will get rid of them again, because they are bad for young people and bad for their learning," she said.

"We will be looking at legal advice around that, but we will get rid of charter schools.

"We will not have charter schools."

The length of the contract doesn't matter, because parliament trumps contracts and can overturn them by statute. And if this deters corrupt profiteers from signing such contracts with National governments in future, so much the better. Those seeking to steal from us should be uncertain (at the least) over whether they will get to keep their ill-gotten gains. And if they're not, that's another failing of the Labour Party.