The Tertiary and Skills Minister says Te Pukenga's priorities aren't right

Penny Simmonds has fronted the Education and Workforce select committee as part of Budget scrutiny week.

She faced questions about the tertiary sector, including the polytech merger, to create Te Pukenga.

Simmonds says it spent time looking at unifying programmes across campuses.

Simmonds says Te Pukenga has major financial issues -- but instead dabbled in unifying nursing programmes, when polytechs and institutes already had functional nursing degrees.