This followed an email to all ministry staff from Director-General of Health Diana Sarfati to stress the need for professionalism in communications.
The Green Party believes the message from Roche and Sarfati is worrying.
Rob Campbell is a professional director and investor. He is chancellor at AUT, chair of Ara Ake, chair of NZ Rural Land and former chair of Te Whatu Ora.
The spectre calls itself “neutrality and professionalism” but its true nature is submission and partisanship.
This is a huge challenge for public servants who typically take their roles and the responsibility they have to the public very seriously. They are threatened by politicians and careerist executives whose loyalty is more closely and personally held to themselves and associates rather than to the public.
We have a very narrow form of democracy in this country with huge power resting in the Government executive. This makes the independence and integrity of the courts and tribunals vital. It’s not hard to see efforts by appointment and commentary to restrain and limit those vital characteristics.
The integrity of the public service and wider public agencies is just as important. We are badly served when they are expected to be subservient to executives and politicians rather than serving the public.
The spectre, exposed recently by political attacks on individual public servants and by a repressive Public Service Commissioner statement admonishing another, works through a veil of high-sounding language but is basically about discipline and control. It is highly political while professing the opposite.
Public Service Association (PSA) Allied, Public Health and Technical health workers protesting outside the Whanganui DHB.
I do not always advocate for business management models in public service. But one critical aspect worth remembering is that of loyalty to the organisation and its strategy. For example, however a person is appointed or elected to a board, once appointed they owe their loyalty to the company.
Another way of putting this is that for organisations to work well and to achieve their purpose, the core loyalty of all those involved must be to the kaupapa. It is damaging if individuals choose loyalty to a specific executive, or to some external interest, over that kaupapa, that purpose.
This should not be hard to understand in the context of the public service. A person working in, for example, health has a legislated kaupapa in the Pae Ora/Healthy Futures Act. The purpose of that Act is clearly defined and has not been changed by the current Government. It very broadly defines equitable and excellent and efficient health services to the public.
We would not expect to find public servants working against this kaupapa, rather than applying their expertise and effort in its pursuit. They must be able to pursue that freely and frankly. That is what they serve. If they find actions which are contrary or obstructive to this kaupapa they have a duty to call it out. That is their duty to public service, not to simply go along with things that are inimical to it but to express that view.
Rob Campbell, former chairman of Te Whatu Ora. Photo / Michael Craig
Sometimes this takes courage. Sometimes ministers or careerist executives will not like it. But if they are wise they will also exercise courage. They will recognise that this is how public service really works, not by dictate but by open pursuit of the public interest. Their exercise of courage may be as Winston Churchill described it:
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen”.
The politicians and career executives who want to control and dictate should reflect on that, recognise the courage of those who speak frankly and sit down and listen to them rather than seeing them as an instrument for their own ignorance.
