DoC paying bonus of up to $3500 a year for civil servants’ Māori language proficiency

Conservation Minister Willow-Jean Prime. Photo / Michael Cunningham

The Department of Conservation (DoC) has agreed to pay its staff a novel bonus of up to $3500 a year for Māori language skills, starting next year.

The decision comes as the department is facing a multimillion-dollar operating budget shortfall - and the National Party has promised to cancel the bonuses if given the opportunity.

DoC follows the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and the Ministry of Māori Development (Te Puni Kokiri/TPK) in offering staff bonuses for proficiency in Māori language. The bonuses are unrelated to practical job requirements.

It’s not clear how many public agencies have made similar provisions; a spokesperson for the Public Service Commission said the agency does not track such schemes. However, they appear to be relatively new.

DoC will pay $3500 a year to staff with level five proficiency; $2500 a year to staff with level four proficiency; and, $1800 a year to staff with level three proficiency, according to new collective agreements, ratified in May, covering some 2000 employees. The te reo Māori Allowance will come into effect on July 1 next year.

Proficiency levels are based on certification given by the Māori Language Commission, which describes level five as “complete proficiency”, level four as “higher proficiency”, and level three as “moderate proficiency”.

DoC chief people officer Tracy Calder said the department has no positions that require te reo Māori fluency for the practical purpose of communicating in the course of work. However, she noted: “There is an expectation that staff will have or will build their capability over time in te ao Māori me ōna tikanga [Māori language and cultural practices] in line with the expectations from the Public Service Commission.”

A DoC spokeswoman declined to say what the department expects the bonus provision to cost; she said the question would only be considered under the lengthy Official Information Act (OIA) process.

DoC ratified the new collective agreements at roughly the same time it hired two consultancies - PwC and Nimbl Consulting - at an estimated cost of $463,000 to review its asset management, analyse its costs and forecast its funding needs in light of an operating budget shortfall this year believed to be in the tens of millions of dollars. The department declined to verify the figure.

DoC refers to the language bonus as “an allowance” but the payment will form part of the remuneration for eligible staff, it will be taxable, and unrestricted in how it is spent.

The department said it offers no comparable bonuses for other skills or proficiencies, however, it offers allowances for specific work duties that require relevant qualifications such as firefighting and drift diving (similarly the Ministry of Education pays job-specific allowances to teachers with Māori language teaching responsibilities above a certain number of hours per week).

DoC will continue to fund Māori language and cultural practice training separately. It declined to answer the Herald’s question about the cost of these programmes outside the OIA process.

National’s spokesman for the public service, Simeon Brown, said his party encourages public servants to learn te reo if they want to or if required as part of a job, but that taxpayers should not fund special bonuses for those who learn it.

He said the bonuses “will be removed” if National forms a Government after the October election.

Conservation Minister Willow-Jean Prime said the department “has a statutory responsibility to give effect to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in all the work they do”, and that improved facility with Māori language will help DoC staff to engage with iwi, hapū, and whānau.

DoC and TPK spokespeople said the bonuses are consistent with a variety of strategies and laws introduced by the Government in the past few years, including the Public Service Act of 2020. The act requires that chief executives of government departments operate employment policies “that recognise” unspecified ambitions such as the “aims and aspirations” of Māori, as well as the need for greater involvement of Māori in the public service.

Calder also cited the Crown’s strategy for Māori language revitalisation known as Maihi Karauna, which was developed by TPK, and covers the period 2019 to 2023.

The strategy document is not categorical about how the Māori language should be promoted amongst public servants but it states that the Government’s role “may include”: “taking steps to actively increase the number of te reo Māori speakers in the public sector …”

Janice Panoho, kaihautū Māori for the Public Service Association, the trade union that negotiated the DoC collective agreements, said the PSA welcomes the department’s commitment to te reo.

She said there are “increasing clauses of this nature in the public sector and that is a good thing if we are to better support the Government’s constructive relationship with iwi and honour our Treaty obligations”.

A spokesperson for MfE declined to answer even basic questions about the Māori language bonuses, including when they began and what they are worth. The ministry insisted that all questions about the bonuses be considered under the OIA process.

Among the “benefits of working at MfE” the ministry’s website lists an “allowance for skills in te reo”.

“If you have been certified by the Maori Language Commission for your skills in te reo you will be paid an annual allowance according to your proficiency. This will not be paid when Māori language/skills/knowledge of culture is a job requirement and is rewarded within the level of remuneration for that position,” the webpage says.

TPK began paying a Māori language “incentive allowance” to permanent full-time staff under its Māori Language Plan 2000-2003, a spokesperson said.

The ministry’s scheme covers five levels of proficiency and pays per annum: $3500 for level five; $3300 for level four; $3000 for level three; $1500 for level two; and $1300 for level one.

A spokesperson said the ministry “aspires to become a workplace in which te reo Māori flourishes, grows and is sustained as the normal language of daily use”.

They said TPK, “like all other government agencies, is obligated to continuously work on diversity and inclusion, as part of the public sector’s Papa Pounamu framework. The framework places a high priority on Māori/Crown relations.”

Papa Pounamu is a statement that sets out the Public Service Commission’s expectations for workforce diversity and inclusion, and was established in 2020.

The TPK spokesperson said the ministry spent $131,330 in fiscal 2022/23 on the bonuses, which were paid to 91 staff.

TPK does not provide bonuses for any other recognised skills or proficiencies.

The language bonuses appear to be anomalous in the international context of countries with which New Zealand often compares itself.

The Canadian federal Government pays a bilingualism bonus of C$800 per annum ($971) to civil servants whose work requires language skills in English and French, Canada’s two official languages.

Last year the Government rejected calls to extend the bonus to civil servants who speak an indigenous language.

The Canadian bonuses are distinct from those newly offered in New Zealand in that they relate only to a job-based need for bilingualism.

Kate MacNamara is a South Island-based journalist with a focus on policy, public spending and investigations. She spent a decade at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before moving to New Zealand. She joined the Herald in 2020.