Our system of government has been built on the partnership between Ministers and their public service officials to implement the government’s policies. Inevitably, that requires a high level of mutual confidence and trust.

The system further assumes that officials, whatever their personal political allegiances, will work impartially with Ministers to achieve those goals. Ministers have the right to expect the professional loyalty and genuine effort of their officials, and officials should expect to receive the support of their Ministers in return.

By and large, the system works as intended, but every now and then things go awry, sometimes seriously. Recent revelations about some Immigration Service officials deliberately pulling the wool over the eyes of both the current and previous governments over a $33 million biometrics technology upgrade that ultimately produced nothing, provoking the understandable “fury” of Immigration Minister Erica Stanford, is perhaps the most dramatic example.

That is presently the subject of an inquiry by the Public Service Commissioner, so making pronouncements, let alone threats of imprisonment, about what should happen next is not only premature but also extremely unwise. Nevertheless, confirmation of Stanford’s complaints by her Labour predecessor, Andrew Little, highlights the seriousness of the situation.

However, officials pursuing their own agendas and keeping Ministers in the dark has been going on in the public service, usually at much lower levels, for years. Indeed, the internationally successful comedy series “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” were predicated on the notion that public servants regularly outwitted Ministers and thwarted their efforts to introduce policies the officials disapproved of. Many politicians, in New Zealand and elsewhere, considered the   series to be documentaries rather than comedies.

I began my working career as a junior official in the old Department of Trade and Industry, in the days when import licensing was still in place. To regulate imports and protect both the balance of payments and domestic manufacturing, the government produced an annual Import Licensing Schedule, setting out which specific consumer and other items and to which extent could be imported. The system was cumbersome, and open to much potential abuse.

Officials regularly ignored the Schedule when dealing with licensing applications from favoured  importers and ran the system according to their own instincts and experiences. Indeed, I recall on more than one occasion being at meetings where officials debated “what would Walter have done” to resolve a particular application, rather than following that year’s Import Licensing Schedule. The “Walter” they were referring to was Walter Nash, who had set up the import licensing system in 1936, decades earlier!

Years later, when a Minister, I recall being told by officials that regulations I was seeking were “just a couple of weeks” away, only to discover soon after that no work had been done on drafting the regulations because officials were unsure how to make them work and did not want to tell me so. On another occasion, I recall two officials appearing before a Cabinet committee to discuss a particular government programme. When the Prime Minister asked how this fitted in with current government policy, they bluntly replied that it did not because it was a programme established by a previous government which they were still administering, regardless of the then current government’s policy.

While these are smaller examples than the current Immigration Service scandal, they are symptomatic of a wider issue. Public servants often become so engrossed in what they are working on that they end up viewing it more as their “life’s work” than the government of the day’s policy. Because they tend to outlast Ministers in their roles, it is easy to see how they come to regard their political masters as transitory interruptions, interfering with the work they have been immersed in for so many years.  

And in many cases, they will be right – as public servants working on an issue over several years and different governments, they will often know more about the details (and the problems) than the Minister to whom they are reporting. But while this may provide an explanation of such behaviour, it does not justify it. It does, however, underscore the challenge facing the Public Service Commissioner in trying to get to the bottom of Minister Stanford’s concerns and the wider systemic issues underlying the behaviour she is so furious about.

But unless they are resolved in a way that enables Ministers – in this government or any future government – to regain confidence in the commitment and professionalism of the public service, the very structure and integrity of our system will be severely shaken. That in turn will impact on public trust – especially if it leads to people no longer having confidence that the government they have elected will be able to implement the policies they voted for.

As the esteemed British philosopher AC Grayling notes, democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires informed citizens, trusted institutions, and a political culture that values reasoned debate and compromise. He argues that when those conditions deteriorate, democracies become vulnerable to polarization, populism, and authoritarian tendencies.

In “Yes Minister” Sir Humphrey Appleby once famously said, “Politicians come and go, but the Civil Service remains … Politicians are there to make the decisions. Civil servants are there to make sure they make the right decisions.” A more balanced view might be that although modern government requires expertise and continuity, the ultimate authority and accountability for making decisions must rest with democratically elected politicians, whatever their limitations, rather than be usurped by public servants, their expertise and experience notwithstanding.

Given the rise of crude populism across the world at present, re-asserting Grayling’s point is becoming a vital step towards sustaining democracy as we know it.

Labour’s recently released party list is a job half-done.

A positive aspect is that it has introduced a small pool of new talent that would be beneficial to Labour’s ranks. However, it has also not only retained, but in some cases, promoted too many of the old guard that contributed so much to Labour’s failure when last in office. While the list ranking process has culled out some of Labour’s deadwood, it has not gone nearly far enough to suggest a future Labour-led government would look significantly different from the one that was so decisively defeated at the last election.

Current polling suggests Labour could win at least 40 to 42 seats at this year’s election. On the assumption Labour holds all its current electorate seats and wins up to 5 additional electorate seats, it could bring in up to 22 MPs from the party list. Yet of that potential 22 list MPs, only 6 would be newcomers to Parliament. And they rank well below many sitting MPs.

For example, controversial but impressive Police Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo – who seems certain to be elected – has been ranked well behind deadwood former Ministers Willie Jackson, Willow Jean Prime and Jan Tinetti, and veteran Megan Woods, who, while more capable, has only switched to the list because of doubts about the security of her heavily redrawn electorate in Christchurch. Yet there is little doubt that Naidoo is likely to make a greater contribution to Labour’s future than all that group ahead of him on the list combined.

Similarly, former School Strike 4 Climate NZ founder and co-ordinator, and possible but outside prospect to win the new Kapiti electorate, Sophie Handford has been ranked number 26 on the list. While she is still likely to be elected from this position, she sits below former Ministers Jo Luxton, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, and Damien O’Connor, whose best years look to be behind them.

Further down the list and on the cusp of being elected is Warrick Cleine, the current chair and chief executive officer of the international accounting firm KPMG, in Cambodia and Vietnam. His presence in the Labour Caucus would almost certainly bolster Labour’s economic credibility, alongside finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds. In a party heavily bereft of economic and business talent, he ought to have been much more highly ranked.

Former Fulbright Scholar and Stanford University graduate, Te Pūoho Kātene, sits a few places further down the list and will probably need to defeat Te Pāti Māori co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer in the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate to be sure of a place in Parliament. He would likely be a strong asset to Parliament, but thanks to Labour’s conservative and internally protective approach to list ranking, he may not get the chance.

Overall, Labour’s line-up still contains too many plodders in senior positions to suggest that a real process of renewal is underway within the party. The list ranking process should have been the opportunity to move aside those drains on Labour’s appeal in favour of talent likely to be the face of Labour over the decade ahead. It has failed to do so. While the plodders remain and dominate, the risk for Labour is that the new talent becomes frustrated, and gives up waiting, so chooses to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

This cautious and conservative approach is likely to also be reflected in Labour’s forthcoming policy announcements. The public transport fare cap policy ($20 a week in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and $10 a week elsewhere) announced this week is a good example. On the face of it, it sounds an attractive policy, although the devil will lie in the detail. Because its application will be limited it will hardly provide the “real cost-of-living relief” and “public transport system that works for everyone” that Labour claims. The fare cap is another job half-done, more a gesture than a major policy, and likely to be viewed by voters as such.

A feature of Labour’s announcements to date has been that they have not gone quite to plan. The capital gains tax policy was hurriedly announced last year after details had been leaked to the media; the list announcement was side-tracked about whether and when Naidoo had informed the Police leadership of his intentions, and earlier this week a Labour candidate almost pre-empted the fare cap policy announcement by suggesting a tax-relief policy announcement was imminent.

Given the modest nature of both its list and policy offerings to date, Labour can hardly afford to have its future announcements disrupted this way. To be taken seriously as a potential government-in-waiting, it first needs to look like one.

Presenting a party list that looks more like clinging to the relics of the past than facing the challenges of the future is unlikely to help to achieve that goal.

 

Parliament rose late last Saturday evening after a marathon period of Urgency passing legislation relating to last week's Budget and other matters. This was not unusual – Parliament usually goes into Urgency for a couple of days after a Budget.

Nor is it unusual for Parliament to begin a three-week recess, as it has done now, once the post-Budget Urgency has finished. This annual recess is normally the time when Ministers get out and around the country to promote the Budget, and when the Opposition sets out its response. It is often also the time when major problems with some of the Budget policies come to light, and when governments are forced into hurried amendments or even backdowns.

What is perhaps a little unusual following this year’s Budget is the low level of public and political reaction to it. Aside from Hipkins' initial response of "more cuts, more pain, and higher costs", there has been no more substantive critique from the Labour Party. The same goes for the Green Party that quickly labelled the Budget a "trashfire" and Te Pati Māori who said, "it was the worst Budget they've seen". Beyond those initial reactions, the Opposition bloc has so far had little to say about the Budget. The public response has been similarly muted, with Dame Lynda Topp's comments against the increase in defence spending being the most vocal.

And aside from the clarification about new mothers and postnatal hospital stays, which related to a post-Budget social media post rather than the Budget announcement itself, there have been no obvious Budget oversights revealed so far that Ministers have had to hurriedly tidy up.

The government will of course argue that this overall lack-lustre response to the Budget was because it has largely got the balance right, and that people understand that in challenging times, as we have now, there are no magic wands to be waved or money-trees to be shaken. Ministers will interpret the comparative quiet following the Budget positively as they approach the rest of the year and the election campaign ahead. They may be right, but the next round of opinion polls will confirm whether that is the case, or, more ominously for the government, whether people have simply switched off what it has to say.

The biggest post-Budget, although still relatively low-key, talking point is when will the Labour Party get around to releasing some policy of its own. For some months now Labour has been saying it will not release policy until after the Budget when it has had the chance to assess the Budget numbers. The not unreasonable point is that it does want to promote election policy that is either unachievable or unaffordable, prudent constraints that never troubled the previous Labour-led government.

However, while no-one expected a torrent of Labour policy releases immediately after the Budget, few would have expected Hipkins’ admission earlier this week that that the Labour caucus has not yet sat down as a team to review the Budget in detail. He says Labour has “yet to decide which bits of it we're going to keep and which bits are going to stay the same." Nevertheless, he says, somewhat contradictorily, that voters “can expect to see quite a bit from us in the near future.”

The eventual release of Labour policy, whenever it occurs, may sharpen debate between the two main political blocs in a way the Budget did not. But, because of the fiscal constraints the Budget has imposed, its impact may also fall just as flat.

By deferring its major policy announcements for so long, Labour has created a potential problem for itself. On the one hand, given its acknowledgment of the need for affordable and achievable policies and its need to be guided by the Budget numbers, Labour’s eventual offering may simply be too bland to convince wavering voters it presents a real alternative to National. Yet, on the other hand, too bold and expensive a set of promises may persuade sufficient voters it would be too profligate in office and so tip the balance back the government’s way.

All in all, the likely upshot of the government’s no-frills, no excitement approach and Labour’s desperation to be seen as responsible stewards, unlike the last time in office, looks set to lead to a very stolid and unexciting few months through until the election.

And that may confirm for many struggling with ongoing cost-of-living pressures that conventional politics no longer works for them, and that it may be time to look to more radical options. Mirroring the trend now appearing with the rise of the Reform Party in Britain and One Nation in Australia, those voters may well turn to the fringes.

In that respect ACT, New Zealand First, the Greens and Te Pati Māori stand more than ready and willing to accommodate them, although none is likely to plumb the depths of extremism the way Reform and One Nation are.