The government is right to resist attempts to turn the Five Eyes Intelligence sharing agreement into a wider political alliance. However, given the growing disposition of some its partners, it is going to become increasingly difficult for it to continue to do so. 

The United States, Britain and their ever-trusty pet Australia are becoming more and more focused on what a rapidly developing China is likely to mean for future Pacific and ultimately global security. More benign Five Eyes partners like New Zealand and Canada are being pressured to join their increasingly activist stance against the resurgent China, and to make the Five Eyes agreement more of an alliance than an intelligence sharing arrangement. 

The significant extension of the role of the Five Eyes agreement such a move would entail goes beyond the scope of the original UKUSA agreement for the sharing of joint signals intelligence that gave rise to it in the first place. That agreement had its origins in the Allied Second World War code-breaking operations at the now famous Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. When it was formalised in the Cold War environment of the early 1950s it was effectively the intelligence component of the regional collective security agreements like NATO, SEATO and ANZUS. Other parties to the original UKUSA agreement included Norway, Denmark and West Germany, but they did not become members of the Five Eyes “club”. 

Over the years New Zealand has been a valuable provider of signals intelligence to the Five Eyes partners. Our geographic location assists our interception capabilities considerably, which explains our value to the other partners. It is also the reason why, despite the somewhat bullying talk being directed our way at present, New Zealand is unlikely to be expelled from the arrangement, even if we do not comply with the current demands to broaden its scope. 

But that does not make the issue of China and how to deal with it any less difficult for us. The prevailing Western view, heightened considerably during the Trump years, that China is now less a force for stability than a potential enemy poses real problems for a country like ours, now so dependent on China for our economic prosperity. Since the conclusion of the China-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement in 2008 China has become our largest trading partner in goods and second largest trading partner overall. No New Zealand government is going to deliberately put that arrangement at risk, given the wider implications for our way of life. 

It was easier for New Zealand to resist the “for us or against us” stance on China during the belligerence of the Trump Administration, because it was so extreme. However, it is likely to become more difficult if, as the early signs suggest, the more benign Biden Administration maintains the same broad stance. 

Unfortunately, the government’s current attempts to explain its position look clumsy and inept. Telling other countries to treat China with more respect, as the Trade Minister has done, makes us look like grovelling sycophants. Using similes like the taniwha and the dragon to characterise the current relationship between New Zealand and China as our Foreign Minister did recently, looks like meaningless waffle, even to those skilled in the art of diplomatic double-speak. 

As an independent nation, New Zealand has every right to form its own views about its relationship with China, and to progress those as best we see fit. We do need to be careful though that in doing so we do not turn a blind eye to everything China does. Its treatment of its Uighur minority is a case in point. There appear to be obvious breaches of human rights occurring here, and New Zealand’s continued silence, given our overall approach to upholding international human rights is simply not credible. Similarly with Taiwan – another important New Zealand trade partner. As a fellow small nation in the shadow of a big neighbour, New Zealand could be expected to uphold the rights of small nations to self-determination, in the event of any moves by China to invade Taiwan at a future point. 

The current anxiety amongst other Five Eyes partners about New Zealand is not so much that we are pursuing our own national interests in respect of China – most countries understand that and do likewise – but that we are allowing ourselves to become seen as a vocal, uncritical supporter of China. Every statement the government makes on the relationship seems to be supportive of China’s position and unaccepting of any criticism of it. Naïve, inexperienced, foolish – call it what you may – that is not helping to advance New Zealand’s position in any way in the eyes of other longer-term friends and allies. 

New Zealand can still continue to play its part as a member of the Five Eyes agreement and progress its wider relationship with China, if it wants, but it just needs to stop appearing so loudly partisan about it. There will inevitably be challenges to our position – that is the nature of the course of international relations – but our primary role should be working to reduce those challenges, not aggravating them by continually drawing attention to our increasing dependence on China the way we are at present. Quiet diplomacy rather than loud-hailer virtue signalling is the far preferable course to follow here. 

Right now, New Zealand should just be getting on with pursuing its interests quietly, determinedly, and unobtrusively. The resort to finger-wagging warnings about international conduct, and obfuscating references to ancient symbols we have seen of late are not signs of independence. They simply make our government look like international “babes in arms”, that much easier to laugh at and discount.

 

 

At first glance, there is a strong back to the future flavour to the government’s just announced health sector reforms. National in the 1990s abolished elected area health boards and replaced them with a single national Health Funding Authority, supported by four Regional Health Authorities, reporting to the Minister of Health through the Ministry of Health. Labour in turn in the early 2000s abolished that structure and returned to elected district health boards. Now, Labour plans to overturn its own model in favour of a new national health authority, Health New Zealand, with four regional divisions, reporting to the Minister of Health through the Ministry of Health.

The irony of this will not be lost on long-term observers of the New Zealand health system. It goes deeper than just the structural changes. When Labour upended the previous model in the early 2000s, amongst the primary officials driving change were Heather Simpson, the then Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and Stephen McKernan, Director-General of Health from the mid-2000s. The latest health changes which unwind the system they set up emerge from a task force led by Heather Simpson, with Stephen McKernan leading the implementation unit responding to the taskforce’s recommendations.

However, this is not to say that the new reforms are merely a carbon copy of the system in place over 20 years ago. While the structures look broadly identical, there are some significant changes to take note of.
Whereas National’s 1990s changes were about driving better efficiency through controlling costs, the current changes seem more about removing duplication and inefficiency and driving policy more directly from the centre than has been the case in recent years.

There is also the added dimension of the independent Maori Health Authority. Conceptually a good idea, its challenge will be, like Whanau Ora has faced in social services provision, to maintain the freedom to promote “by Maori, for Maori” solutions without heavy-handed bureaucratic intervention concerned that it might be going “too far”.

The re-establishment of a new separate Public Health Agency has been long signalled. However, some aspects of it raise concern and are probably worthy of further consideration before final decisions are made. For example, while it is perfectly understandable that in the wake of the pandemic a group be established to oversee current and future pandemic preparedness plans, it is questionable whether that should be within the narrower focus of the Public Health Agency or more broadly based. One of the criticisms of the current pandemic approach, especially as we begin to move to a post-pandemic phase, is that continued sole focus on a public health approach is too narrow and inflexible. It may therefore be more prudent to establish a dedicated multidisciplinary separate pandemic response team outside the Public Health Agency, but able to work across the full health sector and the machinery of government as a whole.

Similarly, the plan to absorb the Health Promotion Agency within the new Public Health Agency is problematic. When the Health Promotion Agency was established to replace previous stand-alone agencies like the Alcohol Advisory Council and Smokefree NZ, there was criticism that this could impact upon the credibility of the public health messages being promoted. Public health messages coming from an overtly government agency always look far more authoritarian than when promoted by stand-alone bodies. The complete absorption of the Health Promotion Agency that was just starting to find its own feet after several years, into the Public Health Agency might lead to a very Orwellian, counter-productive approach to future public health promotion.

The government may well point to the response to the “official government announcements” we have been subject to on Covid19 over the last year in defence of this move. However, that would overlook the fact those messages have become more easily discounted as time has gone by. More worryingly, they have become less about purveying information and more about pushing propaganda. While that may have been fine for the Covid19 response, it is unlikely to work over the longer term on more broad public health themes like healthy living, diet and exercise. The last thing people will take kindly to or treat seriously is government dictums about what they should eat and when they should exercise!

There is plenty of time over the next two to three years to iron out some of these wrinkles as the new system is put in place, and the government should seek to work closely with affected communities accordingly.

However, there is one over-arching aspect to this reform which it is difficult to escape. This is fundamentally a statement of Labour philosophy about the role of government in the delivery of health and social services. At its heart, Labour believes that the primary responsibility here lies with central government, and that community initiative, let alone personal responsibility and self-management, come a distant second. The health reforms are a clear statement of that belief.

It is no coincidence that the heavy centralisation inherent within them mirrors similar recent moves in the education sector to centralise more control in central agencies like the Ministry of Education, at the expense of school boards of trustees. Likewise, performance failures in aspects of local government as well as new emerging responsibilities in water management, and forthcoming changes to resource management legislation make it virtually inevitable that major local government reforms, including perhaps a streamlining and further reduction of local authorities, lies ahead.

While the health reforms are being promoted as a necessary response to a system that is failing they are also a strong reminder that this is probably the most fiercely ideologically flavoured Labour government since the 1970s. That alone will make for an interesting public response.

 

The absolute last thing the National Party should be considering right now is another change in leadership – its third in less than a year were it to happen in the next few months.

National has far more pressing tasks at hand. To have any prospect of challenging a still rampant Labour – even though the signs are emerging of a slow fade of its gloss – National needs to first work out what it actually stands for. Is it a traditional liberal/conservative party as it was in its recent successful heyday, or is morphing into something else? A hard-line law and order party of religious and moral conservatives? Or just a paler version of the modern Labour Party?

At the moment, National is showing at different times and to different audiences contradictory signs of trying to be all of these things, leaving its message looking confused, constrained, and half-baked. Even on Covid19 where the increasing cracks in the government’s response are becoming obvious, National’s response has been inconsistent, varying between timid caution, for fear of upsetting middle New Zealand too much, and downright imitation. The nett result is that it has left the field wide open to ACT to be the government’s staunchest and most focused critic, climbing slowly but surely in the polls at National’s continuing expense as a result.

Then there are the matters identified in the party’s recent still secret internal review that need attention. While much of the detail remains out of the public arena, the question of candidate selection and management has been highlighted. This has been given prominence by some very unfortunate candidate selections for the 2017 election where some candidates who were clearly not up to the task of being MPs were selected, elected and then embarrassingly exposed as seriously flawed.

The problem is not just limited to 2017 though – there have been other dubious selections over the years of either similarly inappropriate candidates, or candidates hiding their true agendas until they became Members of Parliament. National desperately needs to develop a selection system that finds and weeds out these people for itself before they are found out to the Party’s detriment on the wider stage. Its currently electorate-based selection system has many advantages but has become too open to local highjack.

Following that is the question of the policy approach going forward. The scope of the government’s fiscal response to Covid19 has left National with very few expansive options. The country’s debt profile for at least the next decade means there is little scope for lavish new spending programmes beyond those already in place. And the scale of Labour’s splashing the cash in the wake of Covid19 appears to have rekindled the public appetite for spending to the extent that certainly the next election, if not the one beyond as well, will not be the time to be preaching too much fiscal responsibility, let alone book-balancing austerity.

Within these constraints, National’s immediate challenge is to fashion a credible Covid19 recovery model which focuses on a sustainable approach to social and economic development. This needs to be built around enhancing employment and educational opportunities for all, especially our young people, whatever their ethnic, cultural, geographic or socio-economic backgrounds.

Only when National has begun to address these issues and demonstrate some progress developing clear and workable policies will it be timely to address the question of the party’s leadership. Hopefully, from its point of view, this will be done with its traditional deftness, rather than the ham-fistedness that did so much damage to its credibility last year. A refocused and sharpened party will dictate the type of leadership required, not the other way round.

The leader of the National Party must be someone who lives and breathes National’s vision and objectives, not just someone who feels “comfortable” with them. The leader needs to be enthusiastic, forward-looking, active and appealing, not a place holder whose best attribute is that they are respected by Caucus. That will not be enough to win over an increasingly demanding public.

Even then, the challenge is a daunting one. Gone are the days when Opposition leaders are given one or two elections to find their feet. Today, the performance demand is instant – lose an election and the skids are under you. (It is worth noting in passing that on this basis prominent New Zealand Prime Ministers like Norman Kirk and Helen Clark would never have made it – they both lost at least one election as leader before becoming Prime Minister.)

So that means anyone challenging for the National Party leadership will need to pick their moment very carefully. There is no point becoming Party leader just to lead it to another inglorious defeat in 2023. And at this stage that looks the most likely outcome of the next election, whoever the leader of the National Party may be. Given the events of 2020 the last thing the National Party needs right now is the advent of another kamikaze leader.       

 

At last! After 10 months working on the issue, New Zealand’s Director-General of Health has graciously decided that Australia is now a sufficiently low-risk Covid19 country that “quarantine free travel is safe to commence” between the two countries – a mere six months after Australia made the same decision in respect of New Zealand. But we still had to endure weeks of Prime Ministerial teasing about when such a decision might be made, and another tediously and unnecessarily long press conference before the announcement occurred. 

According to Dr Bloomfield, part of the reason for the process taking so long was because “the systems have not been in place to allow for safe green zone travel both ways between both countries’’. Aside from the incredibly patronising and superior tone of this comment (Australia is after all at least as medically, scientifically and professionally advanced as New Zealand), it raises a number of questions about the way in which decisions like this have been reached. 

I am a strong believer in an evidence-based approach – be the evidence, scientific, economic or whatever else is appropriate to the issue at hand. I respect the professional capability of those advising governments in such situations to do so to the best of their experience and ability, and for that advice to be examined and considered accordingly. I do not expect that advice to go beyond the areas of the professional expertise of those providing it, nor to stray into at best tangential conclusions about other aspects of the issue at hand, but outside their specific realm. 

At the same time, I expect those receiving the advice – governments and Ministers in the main – to reach their own decisions on what has been presented to them, just not accept uncritically what has been proffered. And then I expect those in authority to accept responsibility and accountability for their decision-making, not attempt to deflect criticism to officials whose advice they chose to follow. 

United States communications consultant Peter Sandman has put it this way: “I am simply not interested in an epidemiologist’s opinion on whether schools should be re-opened. I’m interested in an epidemiologist’s opinion on how much more the virus will spread if schools are reopened. Whether schools should be reopened – that’s not their field. It bothers me when they try to pretend that it is.” 

It is clear that throughout the Covid19 crisis our government has relied heavily on the advice of the Ministry of Health, personified by the Director-General. That is entirely as it should be – on the Health aspects of the pandemic – but so much of the secondary decision-making on areas like the detail of the organisation and day-today management of tangential issues, like for example, border control and the managed isolation system, has also relied on the advice of the Ministry of Health which is not professionally skilled in such areas. Dr Bloomfield’s comments about the adequacy of airport systems on either side of the Tasman delaying the start of the two-way bubble is another example. 

Two things are at play here. The combination of the over-use of a limited statutory power conferred upon the Director-General of Health under the Health Act, and the comparative success of New Zealand’s elimination strategy, have elevated his role to one of expert on all things Covid19. No matter his expertise or professionalism, and without any disrespect, that can never be the case, given the health, societal, cultural and economic complexity of this issue. It is simply beyond the scope of any one individual anywhere to be so endowed. However, it is perhaps understandable, given that over the last year professional advice, opinion, fear and uncertainty have became so melded together that in New Zealand, as elsewhere, it has often been difficult to distinguish between them, and thus place the appropriate weight upon what is being said. 

That is where the role of government becomes important. The decisions needing to be reached are the ultimate responsibility of governments, not those advising them. (Harry Truman’s famous desk sign. “The Buck Stops Here” if you like.) In its pains to give reassurance that its decision-making has been based on sound advice, the government has too often given the impression that it is the officials and external advisers calling the shots, not the Ministers responsible. Again understandable, but there comes a time when leadership, not deference is required. 

Governments, after all, are there to make things happen, not provide excuses because they cannot. If Australia was able to decide last October to allow quarantine-free entry to New Zealanders, because of the perceived low level of risk, there is no plausible reason why New Zealand could not have reciprocated at that date, especially since only three cases of Covid19 have ever come to New Zealand from Australia. It was not the officials that prevented this happening – rather it was a failure of political leadership. 

Similarly, with the Pacific bubble. Given the lack of cases across the Pacific, there is no credible reason why this cannot occur almost immediately, rather than over the next few months as is being tentatively suggested. Whatever official advice may have been provided to justify the delay, the buck does not stop with those advisers. The ultimate decision-making responsibility is not theirs, but the government’s, and it needs to accept responsibility for this, not keep playing this silly “we would like to, but” game. 

However, the blurring of the lines between advice and decision-making that the government has allowed to occur over recent months, means that the perception for many is not that political indolence is to blame for the lack of action, but rather official advice. And when official advice which we are not allowed to see strays beyond its area of expertise, it becomes extremely difficult to sheet home accountability. 

A proper evidence-based approach to current decision-making would cut through all this nonsense. Professional expertise boundaries would be clearly defined, honoured and respected. Likewise, decision-makers would accept the responsibility that goes with their role and acknowledge their accountability for what is happening. 

We have been through a lot over the last year. We cannot pretend that while things are improving we have yet returned to a risk-free world. We have tolerated restrictions and variations in government decision-making, in the interests of the greater good. But now we need to shift gear – to how we progress to a more normal situation. The government needs to take charge of the way forward, moving beyond the caution of officials who seem to have called all the shots to date by disguising inertia as professional advice that the time is not yet right. 

Extending quarantine-free travel across the Tasman quickly to the wider Pacific will show if it is up to doing so.  

 

Since the early 1980s successive National- and Labour-led governments have struggled to find the best way of funding and delivering effective public health services. In 1983 the then 29 hospital boards administering the country’s health system were replaced by 14 area health boards. The hospital boards were considered too narrowly focused on hospital-based services, at a time when there was a growing emphasis on wider public health services beyond hospitals, hence the move to area health boards. 

But by 1990 it was clear that the new model was struggling to perform any better than its predecessor. When then Health Minister Helen Clark sacked the largest of the area health boards – the Auckland Area Health Board (of which her husband was an elected member) – because she considered it dysfunctional, and replaced it with an appointed commissioner, the short-lived area health board experiment was effectively over. 

The National government of the early 1990s formally abolished the remaining area health boards and replaced them with a centralised Health Funding Agency and four Regional Health Authorities. The Regional Health Authorities were intended to bid to the Health Funding Agency for the funding necessary to deliver the appropriate health services required for their region. The model was intended to be accompanied by a detailed definition of what constituted core services, what they might cost and how they could be organised and delivered, to assist Regional Health Authorities in their funding applications to the central body. 

However, the core services review immediately aroused suspicions that it was a cover for the introduction of more competitive business models – “Americanisation” it was pejoratively called – to the public health system. When charges were introduced for some short-term emergency procedures requiring a night in hospital, and hospitals were renamed Crown Health Enterprises (or CHEs, as they became widely known) and established as stand-alone enterprises, the public concluded things had gone too far. Another major shake-up to restore a sense of equilibrium was inevitable when the next change of government occurred. 

That came in 1999, with Helen Clark now the Prime Minister and her trusted adviser Heather Simpson, who has been with her since the mid-1980s, her chief of staff. What emerged was a system of 20 district health boards, with half the membership elected locally and the other half and the chair appointed by the government. The system was intended to be a careful balance between recognising local interests and the government’s policy priorities and has been the basis of the system since then. 

However, the careful balance quickly gave way to stalemate, and a sense that through the power to appoint the board chair, the government was usually able to ensure it got what it wanted, often at the expense of local priorities and concerns. At the same time, the inherent operational inefficiencies of 20 autonomous boards, each ordering their own equipment and supplies and running their own systems became obvious and cumbersome. Ministers of Health discovered that the autonomy given to boards meant that they had no power to direct boards to do anything, but rather had to plead with them through the appointed board members or pointedly worded phrases in the annual letter of intent sent to each board, in the hope they might get their way. 

The last National-led government started to address the organisational inefficiency aspect by getting some smaller boards to collaborate on and share back-room administrative services. But scorched by the public response to its replacement of elected area health boards by the appointed Health Funding Agency in the 1990s, National was extremely reluctant to do anything overt about reducing the number of boards, lest it once more be accused of stifling local democracy. Instead, it attempted, largely unsuccessfully, to encourage board amalgamations, but the only one that happened during its time was the extremely unpopular merger of Otago and Southland after one board had been fired and replaced by a commissioner. 

Another review to tidy up what seemed to be too many loose ends, and to give recognition to the distinct interests of Maori and Pasifika in public health was inevitable when Labour took office in 2017. Just as inevitable – not to mention extremely sensible – was that Heather Simpson should head the review. Few people would have had the length of exposure to the public health system, its strengths and foibles, and the sense of perspective time brings, as she had. 

The Simpson Health and Disability Services Review recommendations were released in June 2020. They are a pragmatic response to the current situation. While establishing a new stand-alone national health authority to run the public health system and halving the number of district health boards and having them fully appointed by the government, not locally elected, may seem dramatic, it is really a refinement of the funder-provider split model the National Government introduced in the early 1990s. The proposal to establish a separate Maori Health Authority has been largely welcomed but there has been criticism that no similar model has been proposed to address Pasifika health concerns. 

For its part, the government has appeared committed to the review, with the Minister of Health promising to announce its decisions on the next steps to be taken shortly. At the time the report was released last year, the then Minister described it as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to back our world-class doctors, nurses and other health staff and deliver a truly national health and disability system”. 

To achieve this objective, the government’s forthcoming response to the Simpson review cannot be half-hearted or incomplete.  Yet the history of health sector reform of the last 40 years under successive governments shows that it has never quite achieved its potential because it has never received the sufficiently full endorsement of the government of the day. Any opportunity for meaningful reform has frequently been compromised by government “cherry-picking" for fiscal and political reasons. More of the same in this instance will simply ensure more of the stagnation that has plagued the system for years. 

The present Minister of Health is well placed to break this mould. Whether he will do so remains to be seen.