As noted in a report published last March by the New Zealand Initiative, Government departments must answer to this ever-ballooning myriad 81 ministerial portfolios. There’s too much overlap and duplication across the whole system.
This is inefficient and confusing. Ministers can be responsible for everything and nothing at the same time.
While the number of ministers hasn’t changed drastically in recent years the portfolios have.
Sometimes this is to appease coalition partners; think Winston Peters’ recent appointment to the reincarnated rail portfolio. Others are window-dressing comms strategies such as Chris Hipkins reviving the Auckland portfolio with Michael Woods at the helm; an acknowledgement at the time they’d lost the ear of the country’s biggest city. Luxon’s just created a Minister for the South Island to balance out his Minister for Auckland. New brand-spanking and spangly inventions have been created; such as making Judith Collins an astronaut.
This is portfolio overload.
Luxon’s public service tzar/Doge equivalent, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche, has signalled he will blow up some departments and agencies, which is welcome news but the Prime Minister must also join him and get a bit Elon Musky himself.
How useful and effective are the women, veterans’ affairs, rural communities and ethnic communities portfolios, really?
The problem with these types of identity portfolios is that eventually we’ll all have one. Take Women, for example. No question there are disparities between men and women that warrant Government attention.
But, there are also disparities that go the other way. Men get sick more and die earlier than women. Four out of five Aucklanders living without shelter in Auckland are male. Men are three to five times more likely to die by suicide.
If we follow the logic of having a Ministry for Women, should we not also have a Ministry for Men? Where does this stop? The answer is it should never have started.
We have a plethora of related portfolios that get chopped up and spread out for no good reason; think universities, vocational education and education.
We now have four portfolios covering Māori issues; Treaty of Waitangi negotiations, Whānau Ora, Māori development and Māori-Crown relations.
We have three portfolios for young people; children, child poverty reduction and youth.
Shouldn’t veterans’ affairs sit under defence? Is family and sexual violence not the purview of the police?
If Luxon is serious about getting our house in order he should start with his own. At a time when he’s rightly demanding the bureaucracy cut costs and make stuff simpler for the public, surely an obvious place to start is with his own shop front.
It’s also something he can do quite easily with the stroke of a pen, much like Donald Trump and his executive orders. It sends a signal to the rest of the troops about how things ought to be run from the top down.
A spring clean, as we commoners would call it, is in order, though the PM will no doubt prefer the term “streamline”.
