An Irish immigrant, she resigned as the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki (the Ministry for Children) and Secretary for Children in 2021 amid considerable controversy over removing Māori children from risky homes and placing them into state custody.
In the calendar year 2020 – the last for which Moss’s salary was publicly released – she made $570,000.
The Herald put questions to the PSC about the pay for Moss’s new job, and its expected duration; a response is expected shortly.
Act Party leader David Seymour is the new Minister for Regulation; he believes over-regulation is thwarting productivity. He and his party promised to cut red tape in last year’s election campaign, and also to conduct more rigorous analysis of the costs and benefits of particular regulations.
In December, the Cabinet agreed to shutter the Productivity Commission, an independent Crown entity charged with providing advice to the Government on improving the country’s anaemic productivity, and to redirect its $5.9 million annual budget to float a regulation ministry. It closed its doors at the end of February.
Critics claimed the agency was politicised by the last Government.
Seymour, however, has simply stressed the funds could be put to better use. He recently told Newstalk ZB: “It’s a question of - what problem is the organisation [the Productivity Commission] solving in return for taxpayer funds? … We believe a regulation ministry could solve much bigger problems for the same funds.”
Staff employed by the Productivity Commission – many of whom have better numeracy than elsewhere in the public sector – have confirmed to the Herald no effort was made to redeploy them, either to the new regulation ministry or anywhere else in the public sector.
The former chairman of the commission, Ganesh Nana, released a scathing “closing statement” last week. In it, he said he and staff initially heard of the agency’s planned decommissioning through media reports.
In late November the new Government released the coalition agreements which underpin it. The Act-National Party document agreed the disestablishment of the commission.
”To hear via a public announcement to media that the organisation you work for is to be closed, without even a courtesy heads-up beforehand, was incredibly thoughtless and unnecessarily cruel to the commission’s staff,” Nana wrote.
He also complained that - between the November 24 publication of Government coalition parties’ agreements and his December 19 receipt of the Government’s formal letter notifying him of its decision to close the commission - he and his fellow commissioners were not given the opportunity, “despite repeated requests”, to present or discuss options for a transfer of staff.
Seymour’s publicly released diary for December notes a telephone conversation with Nana on December 18.
