Her speech was notable for being a toe-curling 5 minutes 30 seconds long, prompting the Academy to introduce a 45-second time limit on how long Oscar winners could spend thanking people.
It is a rule usually observed in the breaching thereof — and it was surpassed by Adrien Brody when he won the Best Actor gong for last year’s The Brutalist.
Wednesday was an enormous day for Simmonds, not just in time spent speaking in the House (which was considerable) but in terms of what all that speaking was about — the passing of the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill into law.
The Bill, which condemns the mega merged polytechnic Te Pūkenga to the cutting room floor, is both a personal and professional passion for Simmonds, the former chief executive of the Southland Institute of Technology.
The creation of Te Pūkenga spurred her into politics, and ultimately to ministerial rank, where Simmonds has assiduously worked to edit it out of the vocational educational landscape.
However, as Simmonds’ third reading demonstrated, it was not all her own work.
"This is a great day for vocational education and training,"she enthused, not at all succeeding in concealing her personal satisfaction at the moment in question.
"That is all the wonderful people who build our roads and our houses, fix our cars, run our farms, plumb our bathrooms, cook for our restaurants, care for our people, the makers, the bakers and the creators, the fixers and the fabricators, the drivers, the shearers, the welders, the hairdressers — those valuable people who are useful and drive our economy."
But wait ... there’s more. Victory has a thousand fathers, and Simmonds was seemingly on a mission to thank all of them individually.
The Parliamentary Counsel Office, officials and private secretaries from the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission were thanked: "I asked for them to have it done before Christmas and they've done that — it's unfortunate I asked two Christmases ago, but we've got it done this Christmas."
Simmonds then moved on to her personal office staff, the education and workforce committee, as well as the other two political parties in the governing coalition.
"But most of all, I would like to thank the communities that I have visited across New Zealand who are so delighted to have their polytechnics back and are ready to support them," she said.
"I want to thank all those wonderful industry people who have been putting their hands up to be in the driving seat to ensure the relevancy of the qualifications in their industry."
Oh, but not forgetting the "wonderful staff across all the polytechnics and ITOs" as well as tradespeople, apprentices and trainees.
All of which led Labour’s vocational education spokesman Shanan Halbert to tartly observe that Simmonds’ 10 minutes had sounded like a valedictory speech.
That seems unlikely: reforming the vocational education system is one thing but ensuring that the reforms stick — and bear in mind that many of the changes in the Bill concern transitional arrangements before full autonomy is returned to several polytechnics, including Otago — is quite another thing.
But Simmonds has campaigned tirelessly to increase industry leadership in vocational education and training and restore local decision-making to polytechnics and their communities.
Whether that is what the Bill actually achieves remains to be seen, but it is definitely a substantial piece of work.
One person Simmonds did not thank in her third reading speech — perhaps because she thought she had already thanked him enough — was Dunedin Green list MP Francisco Hernandez.
The lengthy committee stages of the Bill featured several interventions and probing questions from Hernandez, and Simmonds acknowledged them as such — ministers in the committee stage usually thank opposition MPs for their questions as a matter of form, but in this case Simmonds really seemed to mean it.
In his third reading speech Hernandez repaid the compliment: "I think democracy is best served when ministers are engaged and active in the subject. Minister Simmonds, with your three decades of experience and a clear passion for the polytech sector, we appreciated your engagement during the committee of the whole House, and you're correct to thank your office. They've been very active in engaging through the parliamentary written questions process, and we thank them for their work."
That was where the thanks ended though, as Hernandez moved swiftly on to set out his three concerns with the Bill: insufficient staff and student representation on the devolved polytechnics (quoting the unlikely figure of Simeon Brown in support of his argument); eliminating requirements for Māori representation, and his perception of the weakness of the federation model for polytechnics.
"If it was such a positive thing, why are polytechs required to be part of it but not required to be consented for it," he asked.
"If the federation model was going to be so successful, then, logically, polytechs would want to be a part of it, and they wouldn't need to be forced to be part of it. "Unfortunately, the government voted down my amendments which would require the consent of the communities and would require the consent of the polytechnics to be a part of the federation."
Sector viability was uppermost in Hernandez’ mind ... and, to be fair, it has been in Simmonds’ mind as well.
Whether the new polytechnic system will last as long as Greer Garson’s record-setting speech is a big question.
But the new system will at least have a runner’s show thanks to robust parliamentary scrutiny.
