Dr Benno Blaschke: Who runs the country after the election
In August, two senior coalition politicians in the governing coalition disagreed in public about the officials who serve them.
ACT's Simon Court said new governments arrive in office to find 'a wall of people who don't necessarily agree with you'. National's Chris Bishop admitted it can be frustrating to get the government's priorities through the system and said that officials could improve on how free and frank their advice is. But he praised the public service for being apolitical.
Every three years, New Zealanders vote for a government. But there is one part of government nobody votes for: the permanent public service. These are the officials who turn the government's plans into action. Their job is to help each elected government deliver on its promises.
Our forthcoming report, No Minister, asks whether they do. We interviewed 40 people with direct experience of the system. We also conducted a large survey through Curia Market Research. Survey respondents were drawn at random from an online panel comprising several hundred thousand New Zealanders eligible to vote, 718 of whom confirmed they were current or former public servants and participated in the survey.
Seven in ten said their job is to serve the public, not the elected government. Less than half of the 718 public servants agreed that elected ministers know better than officials what the public wants. And four in ten disagreed that elected ministers should make the final calls on policy.
In our report, officials who believe they are better suited than ministers to divine the will of the public and reject ministers' democratic mandate make up the 'bureaucratic priesthood'. About one third of the 718 public servants, and one out of five who advise ministers, belonged to this group.
These officials trust their own view of what is good for the public over the result of the election. They were more likely to endorse tactics that substituted their will over the minister's. But unlike ministers, they cannot be voted out. When officials, not ministers, decide what the public gets, they override the voters' choice.
We all pay the price. Over the last decade, housing and infrastructure policies from both Labour (for example, Phil Twyford's struggle with the Urban Growth Agenda) and National governments have been held up.
The grievance is not partisan. Governments of the left and right have struggled to get their programmes through. Ministers who arrive prepared and give officials clear direction do better, but even they can struggle. A system that depends on exceptional ministers needs fixing.
So, the next government cannot assume the public service will always help it deliver what voters elected it to do. Neutral officials and a mutual working relationship between officials and ministers cannot be taken for granted.
No Minister is out on Monday 16 November. Benno is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative.
The minister needs to be able to hire his/ her ceo and they sort the non believers out.
O nly way forward.
I’m hopeful for a returned NAT/ACT/NZF coalition that implements ACT’s plan to reduce and simplify the number of ministries. That gives each minister more direct control over such public servants and in principle, would address the obstruction you have highlighted as the problem.
Parliament writes the law.
Government follows the law.
Judiciary upholds the law.
Parliament does not run the country. Experts do.
Having said that we now need to work out why NZ and specifically the NZ economy is in such a state. A mess. One answer is non-qualified elected MP interference. An example of that is the cancellation of the iRex ferry contract. When all costs are taken into account including the $222 million paid to Sth Korea for braking the contract and other costs we end up getting 200 metre ferries for the same cost of the 240 metre ferries. The most incompetent blunder of all time,
Who will run the country after the election?
The same people who were…
Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were very good documentary’s and have aged well.
I remember one episode where one civil servant asked the other if another was “sound” I.e could he be trusted as “one of us”?
The best option I have seen is David Seymour's thoughts on the lack of control by Ministers because in so many cases the departments report to more tham one. So nobody takes responsibility for the inaction or wrong direction of the bureacrats. One minister per department is the way to go and less departments is even better. Come to think of it, no-one else has even addressed this problem. Go get them David. We are relying on you.