Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announces senior Cabinet ministers will take over the Broadcasting and Disability Issues portfolios. Video / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Richard Prebble
Richard Prebble is a former Labour Party minister and Act Party leader.
Anyone can sack a minister. Ministers have no job security. Last year we voters fired them all. What is challenging is keeping ministers.
Both Melissa Lee and Penny Simmonds were carrying out their portfolio duties. Lee to have no media policy and Simmonds to getsavings from the Ministry for the Disabled People.
The ministers were unable to defend their lack of action in one case and actions in the other. It is the leader’s job to be the party’s principal spokesman and defender. As leader, I was determined to never let the Opposition or the media force me to sack one of my MPs.
Willie Jackson says that “Melissa never got any support”. He claims no National MP came to her defence.
After Christopher Luxon failed to defend his ministers who had committed no breach of the Cabinet manual, we are now to believe they are “tremendous” in their other portfolios. Are we going to end up like Britain with ministers in a revolving door? UK cabinet ministers have served an average of just eight months in a portfolio since 2019, according to a report by Strong and Stable. The British Government is in chaos.
Luxon justified his sackings saying: “This is how I roll, this is how I lead. I make constant assessments.”
Show me an incompetent minister and I will show you an incompetent departmental head. Unless the minister commits an indiscretion, good departmental heads do not lose their minister. Clearly, Melissa Lee and Penny Simmonds were poorly advised.
The same people who gave Labour disastrous advice are advising the coalition. Labour’s political appointees are still on boards. A Prime Minister who was making “constant assessments” would realise that is what he must change.
Australia, like New Zealand, has a merit-based civil service but at the state and federal level after an election in Australia, ministers are entitled to change department heads. Some are replaced.
Melissa Lee was stripped of her Media and Communications portfolio last week. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Ministers cannot appoint anyone. The new CEO still must go through a merit-based process, but ministers can insist on having a CEO that they can work with.
In contrast to Australia, in New Zealand, we have a system where ministers can be fired while the CEO has job security. I have myself had to work with departmental heads in whom I had little confidence. Relations between a minister and a departmental head can completely break down.
Luxon has had no experience of what it is like to be a line minister. It is nothing like being the chief executive of Air New Zealand where he was able to choose his managers.
It is nothing like the Prime Minister’s office where the PM is surrounded by his own appointees.
Ministers of large departments may have thousands of career bureaucrats, none of whom the minister has appointed. The quality of advice from some departments is woeful. Departments may be passively opposing coalition policy.
In an interview in April the PM said: “We really want the ministers to deliver on this agenda, and, you know, there would have to be a pretty good reason as to why it hasn’t been delivered.”
There is already a very good reason. The coalition failed to demand that all Labour’s political appointees offer their resignation. One of National’s key election promises was “to reduce the cost of living”. Inflation is the responsibility of the Reserve Bank. The decisions on the Official Cash Rate are being made by Labour government appointees.
A key government policy is to reduce the number of civil servants. The Education Department has gone from 2630 civil servants in 2017 to 4311. While a competent minister of education would have questioned why such a massive increase was necessary the decision to employ almost twice as many people in head office was made by the CEO.
Is that CEO the right person to downsize the department?
Many critics of the Education Department believe the present department is incapable and unwilling to implement the coalition’s policies to improve pupils’ maths and English.
If maths and English do not improve, is Luxon going to sack Erica Stanford, a hardworking and able minister, when she was not able to appoint her own choice of CEO?
The minister at most risk is Nicola Willis. The Finance Minister is second only to the Prime Minister. With the Treasury promoting woolly notions such as wellness budgets, there is reason to doubt the quality of departmental advice.
New Zealand faces very challenging economic issues. If Willis cannot appoint a world-class economist to head the Treasury she will struggle to deliver the coalition’s agenda.
Willis or Stanford will not agree to be thrown under the bus. National’s coalition ministers certainly will not.
If firing ministers who have had to work with Labour appointees is the way Luxon rolls, it will become the reason he is rolled.
- Richard Prebble is a former Labour Party minister and Act Party leader. He currently holds a number of directorships.
