Prime Minister Chris Hipkins' office found out on a Friday evening that Minister Michael Wood had yet to sell his shares in Auckland Airport despite warnings over two years he needed to do so. But it took them until the Sunday evening to advise the Prime Minister of this and the likely political row once the news became public.

 

National Leader Christopher Luxon decided to order a Tesla car as the self-drive car he was entitled to as Leader of the Opposition. His office apparently had misgivings, given Luxon's earlier criticisms of the government's subsidy scheme for electric vehicles, including Teslas. Following their intervention, Luxon changed his mind and cancelled the order. 

 

In the previous term, allegations of sexual harassment by a Labour staffer were held back by her office from the then Prime Minister on the grounds that keeping her in the dark would protect her from any suggestion she knew about the allegations and had not acted. By the time she became involved, it looked as though she had been covering for staffer concerned.

 

In all these cases the damage had been done by the time the leader became aware of the circumstances, and they were on the political defensive as a result while the issue played out in the public arena.

 

Each of these incidents raises questions about the role and performance of the respective leaders’ offices at the time. The leader’s office – be it the office of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition – and their senior staff within, play a critical, often backroom, role in our system. They provide not only the administrative support that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition require to do their jobs, but more importantly are often the leader’s political eyes and ears on a day-to-day basis.

 

A good leader’s office will keep its leader closely informed about what is going on around Parliament – the gossip as well as the reality – with the aim of ensuring the leader is not caught out or taken by surprise. Leaders need to know quickly and early what situations are developing so that they can deal with them. The worst thing any Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition wants is to be caught on the back foot having to defend a situation that may not be of their making, but to which they will be expected to respond.

 

The leader’s office should also be co-ordinating the implementation of the party’s political and Parliamentary strategy. This is especially so for the Prime Minister’s office, and the chief of staff in particular, who ought to be co-ordinating the activities of all Ministers’ offices to ensure they are working towards achieving the government’s objectives. Former chiefs of staff (like Jim Bolger’s Rob Eaddy, Helen Clark’s Heather Simpson, and Sir John Key’s Wayne Eagelson) were particularly adept in this role and were extremely influential members of those governments as a result. (Indeed, Heather Simpson was such a pervasive figure she became widely known as H2 to Helen Clark’s H1!)

 

It is hard to imagine the situations Hipkins and Luxon have faced recently occurring under any of those former chiefs of staff, which begs the question of what is going on within leaders’ offices at present.

 

Sources suggest that during Ardern’s time as Prime Minister, her leader’s office pulled back from actively co-ordinating and overseeing the operation of Ministers’ offices, preferring to leave that role to individual Ministers, under the overall guidance of the Cabinet. That loose arrangement for managing the day-to-day activities of the government seems to be continuing under Hipkins, which may lie at the heart of the government’s delivery problems. While it may have been a genuine but naïve attempt to keep Ministers, rather than officials, at the forefront of implementing government policy, it has not worked in practice and has left the Prime Minister isolated from many day-to-day aspects of government. That means small brush fires often become bigger scrub fires before the Prime Minister gets to hear about them, as was the case with the Wood situation.

 

A large part of this is due to inexperience on the part of both Ministers and staffers about their respective roles and how they should interact. Beyond that, there seems to be a general unwillingness to accept or even invite relevant external advice about this, which implies an insecurity and lack of trust about advice generally.

 

Politicians often like to believe they know best. This can sometimes translate into an unwariness or downright unwillingness to trust staff and the advice they give, because, unlike the politicians, they have not been elected by the public. While correct, it overlooks the point that whatever they may think, politicians cannot do everything by themselves. They need the support of professional staff to achieve their political goals, and to present them with the wider picture when their own views become myopic, or out of touch.

 

Hipkins has been forced to learn all this the hard way, as his increasingly testy response last week to questions about Wood showed. Luxon has so far tried to laugh off the Tesla incident, but will no doubt learn from it regarding the role of his office, in Opposition or in government for the future.

 

The way both offices left their leaders exposed should be timely reminders that their role is to ensure their leaders are always kept in the loop to avoid trouble, rather than advising them only when the damage, however big or small, has been done, and a mop-up job is required.