The government’s relief that New Zealand seems to have escaped a bullet regarding President Trump’s tariffs may be short lived. New Zealand exporters will face a flat 10 percent tariff on goods sent to the United States, but that is at the lower end of the scale of tariffs Trump has imposed on other countries.

However, that may not be where New Zealand’s tariff travails end, if history and the experience of other countries is any guide.

In recent days, Trump has turned his attention to the international pharmaceutical industry, suggesting it was time to apply tariffs to pharmaceuticals because America “doesn’t make anything” in terms of drugs and medicines. He has particularly singled out Ireland, telling the country’s Prime Minister at the White House recently that "all of a sudden Ireland has our pharmaceutical companies, this beautiful island of five million people has got the entire US pharmaceutical industry in its grasp."

America is currently Ireland’s major export market, receiving around 28% of all its exports. Around two-thirds of Ireland’s exports to America are pharmaceutical products, manufactured by American companies operating under licence in Ireland. The Irish economy is therefore especially vulnerable to any new tariffs (potentially as high as 25%) Trump may impose on pharmaceuticals.

New Zealand has no pharmaceutical manufacturing industry to speak so therefore is not vulnerable to tariffs in this way. But it does have the government’s drug procurement agency, PHARMAC, which America has long regarded as anti-competitive in relation to American products entering the New Zealand market.

PHARMAC was established in 1993 to arrange the purchase and supply of the medicines New Zealanders need. Its centralised approach and tough, single price negotiating stance has infuriated pharmaceutical companies the world over, arguably driving those that were operating in New Zealand at the time to move offshore. While PHARMAC has also been the recipient of constant local professional and political criticism for its hard-line approach, it has gained grudging recognition for the part it has played in keeping the country’s overall medicines bill under reasonable control.

However, America has been one of PHARMAC’s most constant and vehement critics, frequently citing its existence – let alone its operation – as a significant barrier to wider trade liberalisation between the two countries. On more than one occasion America has called for the paring back of PHARMAC’s role as the price of any form of freer trading arrangement between the two countries.  To their credit, successive New Zealand governments, have always resisted that pressure.

While PHARMAC does not appear to have been raised during the recent tariff discussions, it seems, given the recent comments about Ireland, only a matter of time before it is. With its preference for substituting cheaper generic drugs for brand-name drugs where feasible, PHARMAC could well be viewed by the Trump Administration as an impediment to the profitability of the American pharmaceutical industry in just the same way it views Ireland’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.

And if tariffs are to be imposed on Irish pharmaceutical exports to America, as seems highly likely, New Zealand should prepare for some sort of tariff imposition to blunt PHARMAC’s impact on the profitability of American pharmaceutical companies supplying to the local market. Because there is no New Zealand based pharmaceutical industry to speak of, any response from America will likely be retaliatory across a range of unrelated sectors but aimed at putting domestic political pressure on the government to bring PHARMAC to heel, the way America wishes.

In a word, it would be a case of good old-fashioned bullying, a trade practice America has frequently relied on over the years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, New Zealand liberalised considerably its laws regarding parallel importing. Parallel importing is the practice of allowing the legal importation of genuine branded goods into a country without the consent or authorization of the brand owner or the official distributor in that market. Parallel imported goods are often cheaper on the retail market than the same goods supplied by the brand owner or official supplier. America lobbied the government of the day and individual politicians extremely hard against parallel importing, which it saw as detrimental to American brand owners, but to no avail.

Many of the arguments now being run by the Trump Administration that American manufacturers have been “ripped off” by cheap imports for years, which is why protective tariffs are now required, are very similar to those raised 25 years ago when parallel importing was an issue. In the current climate, there is no guarantee they will not be raised again insofar as New Zealand is concerned.

Against that backdrop, therefore, and given what seems to be a fast-moving international situation any sense of relief here that New Zealand has escaped the worst of the tariff impositions would be unwise. The recent tariff announcements seem unlikely to be the end of the matter. Trump likes to boast of the number of countries that have apparently approached the White House in the wake of the tariff announcements seeking new more- America friendly trade agreements instead of tariffs.

This makes it clear his wider agenda is to reshape the entire global trading structure away from the free trade emphasis that has dominated international trade discussions since the late 1980s. Trump not only wants to protect American manufacturers from competitive imports, but also to skew the entire global trading system in favour of America’s interests.

New Zealand was a leader in the global free trade movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s. As Trump tries to force the pendulum back the other way, we will not be able to avoid being caught up in the consequences of a struggle that has only just begun.

 

Should former Labour leader and Minister Andrew Little decide to seek the Wellington Mayoralty later this year he will have a very good, but by no means guaranteed, chance of winning.

Little was regarded in national politics as a reasonable, competent safe pair of hands, although sometimes his passion got the better of him, causing the National-led Government to label him "Angry Andy" after one of his not infrequent outbursts in the House when Leader of the Opposition. However, a stint in government as a senior Minister in the Ardern and Hipkins governments seems to have mellowed him somewhat, although that may be severely tested if he ends up as Mayor having to work another of the fractious Councils Wellington has had to endure over recent triennia.

Nevertheless, Little would bring a level of gravitas to the election race that has been missing so far. None of the already confirmed candidates appeals as having the political heft to look like a credible Mayor-in-waiting. Voters yearning for an alternative to the current leadership might well be relieved at the prospect of Little's candidacy. Some may even take the trouble to vote for him, rather than just complain about how bad things in Wellington have become.

Mayor Tory Whanau's reputation has been virtually destroyed by both her personal performance and the Council's public bickering over the last three years. But until Little's name emerged, she remained a reasonable bet to get re-elected because of the array of uninspiring candidates lining up against her and the Single Transferable Vote system Wellington uses for its elections. While she might not be everyone's first choice, she could well win enough of the preferences of lower polling candidates to get over the line again after two or three rounds of counting.

If he runs, Little will need to have a clear electoral strategy to gain most of the second and third preferences of the already declared anti-Whanau candidates. And he will need to communicate that unambiguously to voters so that they understand fully what they must do to defeat Mayor Whanau. Without such an approach, there is the very real prospect of votes being split and preferences wasted, enabling Whanau to come through the middle for a second term.

Little’s second challenge is to craft a credible election platform on which to campaign. Just being a known name with previous central government experience will not be enough – something former United leader Clive Matthewson, another long-term MP and former Minister discovered when he ran and lost to then-unpopular Dunedin Mayor, Dame Sukhi Turner, in that city’s 1998 Mayoral election. Jim Anderton had the same experience as a former Deputy Prime Minister running against previously unpopular Sir Bob Parker in Christchurch in 2010, although that result was heavily influenced by Parker’s forthright leadership in the aftermath of the city’s first major earthquake, just a few weeks before the election.

The problem for Little with policy is two-fold. He has already been critical of the Council’s performance in many areas. However, he will need to be careful in putting forward his policy alternatives not to alienate the Green Party which has endorsed Whanau as its candidate, thereby threatening wider Labour/Green relations in the leadup to next year’s General Election. As a seasoned politician Little should understand that dynamic.

But here is where the second of Little’s problems arises. The votes he will need to chase to win the Mayoralty are not going to come from the centre-left. Disaffection with Whanau and her Council cronies is most pronounced on the centre-right of Wellington politics. It is the votes of those in the leafy suburbs that Little will need to win to become Mayor and his policy package needs to appeal specifically to them. Otherwise, their votes are likely to be split between the motley collection of centre right candidates already in the race and so ensure Whanau’s re-election.

This will be difficult for Little, given his extensive trade union and traditional Labour background. While he has been regarded as a safe pair of hands, he has not been known so far for his ability to work across party lines. For that reason, many of the voters he will need to win over, and who want to see change, will need to be convinced that they can trust Little as a person and that he will deliver the changes they are seeking. If not, they will probably just sit on their hands and not vote in the election, again increasing the prospects of Whanau’s re-election.

On the face of it, both Whanau’s ineptitude and the scatterbrain performance of her Council supporters, who act more like the most extreme and immature of student politicians than responsible Councillors for the capital city, should have ensured the Mayoralty is there for the taking.

However, Wellington’s electoral dynamics are such that what should be a foregone conclusion is not quite that straightforward. It probably explains why so many quality candidates who have been touted as possibilities have ruled out putting their names forward.

Should Little decide to run, he is arguably the best alternative prospect to emerge so far. But he faces an almighty task to turn that prospect into reality, and to become the capital city’s next Mayor.

 

While the government is in the mood for breaking up failing conglomerates like the supermarket duopoly, it should consider doing the same to one of its own largest agencies – the ubiquitous Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. MBIE was supposed to be the government’s go-to department, but nearly everything it gets involved in ends up turning to dust at some stage.

It was MBIE that devised and managed the cumbersome, draconian MIQ scheme during the Covid19 lockdowns. It was MBIE, rather than the expert drug buying agency PHARMAC, that oversaw the Covid19 vaccine procurement process which left New Zealand one of the last countries in the world to get the vaccines, despite then Minister Megan Woods’ promise that New Zealand would be “at the head of the queue”. Apparently, although the orders may have been placed early enough, MBIE failed to ensure payment in advance to ensure stocks were supplied, a mistake PHARMAC would never have made.

Now, MBIE’s influence appears to have expanded to include judging the value of international events. Its unwillingness to support Auckland Council’s proposal for a bed tax to fund the next America’s Cup defence in Auckland in 2027 seems to have been a major influence on the government deciding not to get involved, and the Cup defence being forced offshore again.

But this is not an isolated case. In recent years, New Zealand has lost the hosting rights for other international sporting events, from the Netball World Cup to the Wellington Rugby Sevens. It is now hard to imagine New Zealand ever hosting a Commonwealth Games or Rugby World Cup series again.

In March 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters blamed what he called “overly influential bureaucratic processes, power-drunk government departments, and some decision makers who care more about their fiefdoms than our country’s economic development and international reputation” for these decisions. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has suggested the government’s failure to support a visitor bed levy for Auckland to help fund an America’s Cup defence could cost it the next election.

Meanwhile, the government’s political defence of the decision not to provide the estimated $75 million necessary to support a Cup defence in Auckland has been predictable. “There is no magic money tree” says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Our priority is New Zealanders’ needs”, she adds, citing schools, hospitals and the cost-of-living. And, drawing on unspecified MBIE advice, she “doubts” the projected $2 billion economic boost that a Cup defence in Auckland was projected to provide. But the $75 million that was sought for the projected America’s Cup defence is a small drop in the government’s bucket, around 0.5% of its annual expenditure, before any economic gains are considered.

The decision also likely sounds the death knell for the Eden Park upgrade. The Prime Minister has already made it clear that the government is unlikely to fund the estimated $110 million needed to upgrade Eden Park.  That will further detrimentally impact our capacity to host international sporting events. Yet taken together, the economic benefits over time from the America’s Cup and upgrading Eden Park would have far outweighed the one-off costs.

All this comes barely a couple of weeks after the government’s vaunted infrastructure summit where the Prime Minister and the Minister of
Finance boldly asserted that New Zealand was open for business again and was actively seeking international investment partners for infrastructure development and significant events.

Both the failure to fund the America’s Cup defence and the upgrading of Eden Park send unwelcome signals about how receptive the government is to be doing the types of deals necessary to bring projects to fruition. Both are good examples where the collaborative investment approach the Prime Minister was so earnestly preaching at the summit could have been applied to overall national benefit. Moreover, the apparent failure to embrace these opportunities does not bode well for possible future infrastructure investment partnerships getting off the ground.

All of which comes back to the “bureaucratic processes” and “power-drunk government departments” Peters was complaining about a year ago. Implicit in those comments was a criticism of the monolithic power of MBIE to stifle development opportunities. There may have been logic at the time of MBIE’s formation in bringing together a key range of government functions as a type of one-stop shop to facilitate progress, but MBIE’s consistently cumbersome and myopic approach, on a range of issues over time, has had the opposite effect.  It is not up to the task and needs to be broken up.

To ensure New Zealand does not become a backwater for international sporting and related events, the government ought to establish a stand-alone independent specialist agency to work on both securing such events for New Zealand and the public and private funding required for them to proceed. After all, our country continues to produce the best sports performers in the world across a vast range of sports and cultural activities. We ought to be able to see them compete here, rather than watching their overseas performances in the middle of the night.

But so long as MBIE’s narrow-minded influence holds sway, that will remain the best New Zealanders can look forward to.

 

A common feature under both the old First-Past-The-Post electoral system and MMP today is that New Zealand has never been subject to dramatic, prolonged shifts in political direction.

While various governments over the years have made bold changes, the process has usually been one of gradualism. If one government goes too far in one direction, the next government either mainstreams or moderates that change. Equilibrium is always restored after swings in the political pendulum. What has therefore evolved has been a process of natural correction rather than radical change.

That was why National’s Sid Holland could deride the Savage Labour Government’s Social Security scheme in the 1930s as “applied lunacy”, only to retain and enhance it when he became Prime Minister over a decade later. Similarly, Sir John Key could dismiss Labour’s Working for Families tax credits scheme as “communism by stealth” in the early 2000s and then embrace it as the backbone of his government’s family assistance programmes a few years later when he was Prime Minister.

On the same basis, Labour vehemently opposed the abolition of compulsory trade union membership in National’s infamous Employment Contracts Act of 1991. However, while subsequent Labour-led governments have modified some of the Act’s provisions, they have never reinstated compulsory unionism, despite it having been a party article of faith for so many years.

Senior Labour MP Willie Jackson made a telling observation at the weekend that one of the reasons Labour lost the last election was because of “identity politics”. He acknowledged that “we did not take enough people with us last time” on the various policy changes the government made. He repeated Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ earlier comment that Labour will not reinstate the policies the electorate rejected in 2023, nor will it overturn all the current government’s policies. As an example of one of the current government’s policies Labour would likely retain Jackson cited the controversial ban on gang patches.

Therefore, New Zealand First’s declaration of a “war on woke” should be looked at against this backdrop of the dominance of the politics of natural correction. At one level, Winston Peters’ declaration is a local version of Trumpism, designed in the main to lock-in the ongoing support of the 5-6% of the electorate that traditionally votes New Zealand First, as well as appealing to those conservative National and Labour voters who feel the country is no longer going quite the way they want it to.

In that regard, it marks the start of New Zealand First’s 2026 election campaign and makes it clear the party intends to be a large thorn in the side of whichever bloc ends up in power, whether New Zealand First is part of it or not. It appears to have ruled out working with Labour, at least under Hipkins’ leadership, claiming it was lied to by Labour when last in coalition with them.

Again, that approach is likely to resonate with New Zealand First’s core base, which has always seen the Party as the aggrieved outsider, perennially wronged by what it considers the excesses of the two old major parties that “need to be taken down a peg.” The fact that both National and Labour have derided the “war on woke” reinforces the New Zealand First base’s view that their cause is right and that they must continue to support the party, in or out of government.

But in the wider context of the politics of natural correction, New Zealand First’s declaration is also important. Peters’ speech outlined a wide range of issues on which he considers the previous government went “woke.”  Some of those policies have also been criticised by his coalition partners, National and ACT and are in the process of either being moderated or dumped altogether. Others, if Jackson’s comments are genuinely reflective of his party’s current position, are unlikely to resurface under a future Labour-led government. Still others are no more than figments of New Zealand First’s vivid conspiratorialist imagination, but valuable rallying cries for its disaffected voter base, nonetheless.

But however much, or little movement there is on any of the so-called “woke” issues, it will, thanks to its overt early claiming of the territory, be a victory for New Zealand First. Any significant movement away from allegedly “woke” policies will prove to New Zealand First they were right all along, while minimal or minor change will enable the party to keep pushing the case for more. It is a simple and cynical, but highly effective, political strategy that comes at no significant cost to New Zealand First.

Previously, there might have been political risks in advocating such an approach so blatantly, but the return of Trump and the sweep of regressive changes he has unleashed has given a new legitimacy to those hankering to promote a similar agenda elsewhere. The rise of Farage’s Reform Party in Britain, and the Alternativ für Deutschland (AFD) in Germany, for example, has shown how appealing Trumpian rhetoric and policies can be to disaffected voters the world over. New Zealand First’s “war on woke” is simply trying to ride the same political wave.

However, the dominance of the process of natural correction means that the "war on woke" is unlikely to succeed to the same extent here. Instead, it is far more likely to end up as a campaign of rhetorical flourish ahead of substance, which will suit New Zealand First very well.  The process of natural correction that has so often been criticised, especially by the ACT Party in recent years, for holding New Zealand back, will likely in this instance prevent a lurch to full-scale Trumpism.

Nevertheless, by claiming the “anti-woke” ground as his own, Peters has stolen an early march on his rivals and thereby probably ensured New Zealand First’s re-election. Peters has always understood better than most that politics is about the acquisition and retention of power. The “war on woke” is simply his latest means to achieve that end.

 

New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme has long been hailed as world leading. Introduced just over 50 years ago, ACC (as it is widely known) provides comprehensive coverage for personal injuries for all New Zealanders and visitors. In return for ACC’s no-fault coverage, New Zealanders have given up the right to sue in cases of personal injury.

ACC was intended to make compensation for personal and work-related injuries fairer and more accessible for everyone, not just those in paid employment. However, as with all broad-brush approaches to complex and varied questions, it has not always worked out that way.

While dealing with physical injuries (falls, fractures and the like) has been comparatively straight-forward, there has been a greater understanding in recent years that long-term, often life-threatening conditions can be acquired in a workplace environment and are therefore also a form of personal injury that ACC should compensate.  Within that, some glaring anomalies have become apparent.

One of the most obvious impacts relates to volunteer firefighters. While they are covered for physical injuries incurred while performing their duties, they are not covered for any wider work-related illness or injury because they are volunteers and therefore not in paid employment as firefighters. Indeed, ACC categorises volunteer fire fighting as a “leisure” activity, because no taxable income is involved. Employed firefighters, by contrast, are fully covered.

But 86% of all firefighters are volunteers. According to the “Hidden in Plain Sight” report last year, volunteer firefighters are the primary responders to most fires, motor vehicle accidents and medical emergencies across New Zealand. The annual economic contribution of their services is more than $820 million. Yet ACC treats them less favourably than it does the much smaller number of employed firefighters, who do the same work.

For some years now, the United Fire Brigades Association, which represents volunteer firefighters and whose Board I chair, has made representations to successive ACC Ministers under both governments to change this anomaly so that volunteers are treated equally with their employed counterparts. With one exception, our representations have been met with polite indifference. We have been told any change along the lines we have been proposing would have to be applied to all volunteers across the community, which would be far too expensive.

That is a spurious argument. The issue we have been raising relates specifically to emergency service volunteers and the special risks they are exposed to. It would be comparatively easy to craft an amendment to deal with this situation, if there was the political will to do so.

The only ACC Minister to show any real interest in and understanding of the issue was Matt Doocey, who was, unfortunately, reshuffled out of the portfolio earlier this year. His successors are yet to show their interest.

Earlier this week, Queenstown volunteer firefighter, Katherine Lamont, launched a petition to Parliament to change the ACC legislation to give volunteer firefighters the same ACC coverage and benefits as employed firefighters. The United Fire Brigades Association has welcomed her initiative and fully supports the petition. In its first few days, the petition has already received more than fifteen thousand signatures. It can be signed at https://petitions.parliament.nz/5872f736-ed2f-443c-f919-08dd5b668762 before April 30.

The egregious anomaly regarding the inferior treatment of volunteer firefighters is reflective of the extent to which our volunteer emergency workers are generally taken for granted. Yet, without them we would have no effective national emergency management response.

The government likes to talk of the work of the National Emergency Management Authority. But without the on-the-ground input of volunteer firefighters, it is no more than an irrelevant bureaucratic paper tiger. Our volunteers need to be nurtured and treated equitably, rather than ignored. If NEMA counted for anything and was worth taking seriously, it would be prominently advocating for the volunteers on whom it relies. But, to date, there has been nothing – it is no more than a handful of people running round central Wellington with clipboards and spreadsheets. NEMA’s annual operating budget of around $50 million could be far more effectively applied to meeting the needs of volunteer firefighters in emergency situations.

The United Fire Brigades Association will continue, now bolstered by the strong support for Katherine Lamont’s petition, to lobby the government to amend the ACC Act to ensure volunteer firefighters are treated equitably with their employed counterparts. The petition also provides a wider opportunity for New Zealanders generally to have their say on the issue, which is why the UFBA is encouraging people to support it.

The “Hidden in Plain Sight” report made clear the value of the contribution volunteer firefighters make to the wider national community. It is not unreasonable to expect the government to recognise that contribution by ensuring they are treated fairly and equitably for the service they provide.

That, after all, is supposed to be the New Zealand way.

The school lunches debacle is a classic example of what happens when social policy projects lose sight of their original objectives.

When the school lunches scheme was established in 2018 the intention was to provide a healthy lunch to those students who because of their circumstances might be going without lunch altogether at school – which would be having a negative effect on their learning – or whose lunches were inadequate and non-nutritious. It aimed to build on more localised programmes that had been run by voluntary agencies like KidsCan over the years.

However, concerns that targeting disadvantaged children by providing them with a school lunch might stigmatise them amongst their peers led to the programme being effectively universalised for those schools involved. Even that was a problem – it stratified schools as rich schools and poor schools and made the false assumption that no children from deprived backgrounds went to rich schools, or vice versa.

The change to greater universal provision meant costs grew rapidly – by the end of 2023 the government was spending more than $320 million a year on school lunches, up from $260 million when the scheme was established.

Unsurprisingly, when the current government took office in 2023 and sought to pare back government spending, the school lunch programme was an early target. The government produced a plan to centralise and standardise the school lunches operation which would save $130 million annually. Subsequent events have shown, even after all the criticism and political posturing from schools and disenfranchised former providers is discounted, that this was not quite as simple or straightforward a process as first envisaged. Today, the government is engaged in a major rescue exercise to try to make its school lunches reforms viable and credible.

However, the basic problem is far more fundamental than just the ability of the current national contractor to deliver the government’s revised approach. The seeds of the current crisis were sown when the objectives of the original scheme were broadened in 2019 to include all children in qualifying schools. That inevitably meant that it was likely to become financially unsustainable in the longer term, forcing whichever government was in power to review what was happening.

But sadly, this approach and result is not an isolated instance. The worthy intention of successive governments not to draw undue attention to disadvantaged or at-risk groups that were receiving the benefit of social assistance has led to policy interventions becoming more broad-brush than targeted to where need was greatest.

For example, the world-renowned Dunedin longitudinal study has found that it can identify children and families likely to be at-risk at an early stage. Similarly, Police data shows that there are a small number of families that dominate the criminal offending statistics. The implication of both is that we have now the data to target specific policies and interventions around those families.

But successive governments – except for Sir Bill English’s short-lived government and its focus on a social investment guiding social service provision – have shown no interest in wanting to follow such a data-based approach to social policy.

Indeed, if anything, their approach has been towards greater universalism, and more broadly based policies. The net result has been more and more resources wasted on people who do not really need government support, while the most vulnerable and at at-risk do not get the help they need, because the government cannot afford the burgeoning cost of universalised social services.

While this broad-brush approach remains the focus, it is inevitable that most social policies will fail to significantly address the needs of those at whom they should properly be aimed. And that will give rise to questioning of the way in which the services are being provided, rather than whether they are being aimed at those that need them. This is precisely what is happening in the school lunches debate at present.

If the government was genuinely brave and serious about reforming social policy to ensure it best meets the needs of those at-risk, it would be looking to a fundamental, back to basics, reset along these lines.  However, that will never happen because too many people now gain from the smothering web of universal social assistance, and no government will want to be seen to be taking something away from people, even if they do not need it.

The perverse outcome of all this is that the current system entrenches division and deprivation, rather than resolves it. The big losers in the school lunches mess remain the group no-one seems willing to talk about – the kids coming to school each day, poorly and inadequately fed. There has been much discussion about previous providers who have lost their contracts, school principals finding the transition to a new system difficult, or even some students finding the meals do not meet their tastes. But there has been little obvious consideration of the needs and responses of the genuinely at-risk children for whom a school-lunch is not another “nice to have” provided by the state, but a genuine necessity.

So long as the current “all things to all people” approach to social services provision continues, programmes such as school lunches will keep failing to meet their objectives, however they are structured. And the level of public dissatisfaction at their mounting cost and apparent ineffectiveness will increase.

Yet, the potential is there to make genuine change for the good by using the data now available to develop targeted programmes focusing on meeting genuine need ahead of just making people feel good. Hopefully, one of the lessons emerging from the school lunches debacle is the imperative to concentrate on resolving real, genuine evidence-based need, ahead of any other factors.

But the uncomfortable truth remains that feel good universalism ultimately satisfies nobody – and leaves the basic challenges of inequality and deprivation unresolved.

Sudden resignations and abrupt departures seem to be the fashion at present.

 

First there was the chief executive of Health New Zealand who announced her resignation four months before her contract was due to expire, and left her role almost immediately. Then there was the Director of Public Health who announced he was stepping down and would be leaving within a couple of weeks. He was followed by the Director-General of Health who announced her resignation and left a week later. This week there has been the resignation of Pharmac's chief executive, effective from the end of May, and the bombshell announcement of the Reserve Bank Governor's resignation and immediate departure.

 

Five public sector heavyweights resigning and walking out the door within the space of a month must be unprecedented. The resignations may all be unrelated and therefore simply coincidental, but the number of sudden resignations in such a short time suggests not and raises suspicions of some sort of behind the scenes agitation and orchestration by Ministers. Each of the departing officials had had their run-ins with members of the current government, both since the election and when they were in Opposition beforehand. 

 

However, with the exception of the position of Governor of the Reserve Bank who is appointed by the Minister of Finance, Ministers are not supposed to have any overt role in the appointment and dismissal of senior public servants – that is the preserve of the Public Service Commissioner. Indeed, unrelated comments last week by the Prime Minister and other Ministers that they were considering amending the law to give Ministers a greater role in the appointment of senior officials aroused strong criticism that this amounted to political tampering with the independence of the traditionally neutral public service.

 

But that is not to say that there are not ways now in which Ministers influence senior public service appointments. The Public Service Commissioner's recommendation of a departmental chief executive’s appointment is signed off by Ministers. That is usually a formality, but it has not been unknown – although rare – for a recommendation to be sent back for "reconsideration".

 

Similarly, Ministers can – and do – raise concerns with the Public Service Commissioner about the performance of chief executives with whom they are unhappy, for whatever reason, in the expectation he will take the appropriate action. In a more direct way, Ministers can make their discomfort with certain senior officials well known, either in Opposition before they come to office or once in power, with the intention that the officials concerned will get the hint and decide to move on.

 

If this is the case in each of the current resignations, it raises wider questions about the future neutrality of the public service. While Ministers must have confidence in their senior public service officials, they cannot try to compromise their neutrality by expecting them to do the government’s political bidding. Officials must always be able to work closely and professionally with Ministers on the development and implementation of government policy, while keeping their political distance. That separation gives the public service its integrity and credibility and should not be interfered with for the short-term political advantage of the government of the day.

However, the spate of recent resignations, along with the unrelated comments about giving the government more direct power in the appointment of senior public servants suggest the traditional concept of public service neutrality is being blurred. Although we are thankfully a very long way from the American model where several top tiers of the public service are expected to tender their resignations whenever the Administration changes, we could be moving to a time where senior officials are expected by Ministers to be more openly politically aligned to the government’s objectives, and to step aside if they are not.

 

Indeed, this may already be the case, given that the appointments in question all happened under the previous Labour-led government, but it still has implications for those who will take on the now vacant senior roles. It is hard to imagine that they will not be people seen to more aligned to the current government’s agenda, which will both immediately raise questions about their own political neutrality and have a flow-on effect on the wider public service. And once the process of politicising senior public appointments becomes embedded, it will be very difficult to wind back.

 

The new Public Service Commissioner has already spoken about changes he wants to make to improve the delivery of public services to increase confidence in the public sector. In the light of recent events, he may now well need to add specifically reinforcing the political neutrality of chief executives to his list of proposed reforms.