KEY POINTS:
Having taken the odd potshot at low-flying bureaucrats in my time, I shouldn't be surprised that the State Services Commission is engaged in an expensive image-improving exercise.
Just released are the results of Kiwis Count 2007, a survey of 6500 scientifically selected clients, carefully designed to find out
what New Zealanders think about the public service.
Despite all the brave self-backpatting accompanying its release, if I was The Big Bureaucrat, I'd find the results rather depressing.
What it shows is the great unwashed don't like him and his kind very much at all, and if pressed for an opinion, automatically assume the worst.
Forget that image of the friendly, tourist-hugging, give-everyone-the-benefit-of-the- doubt Kiwi. Beneath our cuddly exterior dwells a bitter twisted misanthrope - well, misanbureaucrat at least.
Not, of course, that State Services Commissioner Mark Prebble said any such thing when launching the document. Instead he was full of praise for those helping him create "a world class professional state service".
Yet the default position of many of his 6500 carefully chosen helpers was to automatically bad-mouth the bureaucrats, even when their most recent experience with a front-line desk officer had been totally fine.
What is revealed is a deep-seated distrust which is just blurted out regardless.
Overall, only 29 per cent volunteered their total trust (a score of 4 or 5 on a 1 to 5 scale) in the service. But when these same people were put under the spotlight and quizzed further, 67 per cent then admitted that, based on a recent personal experience, "you can trust them to do what is right".
It was the same pattern when asked about the "overall quality" of the public service. Off the top of their heads, only 35 per cent gave it a positive thumbs-up, but when asked to judge their "most recent service experience", 68 per cent admitted their "total satisfaction" with the encounter.
Not surprisingly, the closest their expectations came to matching experience came in dealing with the taxation services, with just 29 per cent expecting a quality service and 42 per cent declaring they got one in recent times.
It must have come as a great shock to the Wellington-based bureaucracy to discover that Aucklanders (40 per cent) had greater faith in the public service than Kiwis in general (35 per cent). The over-65s, (42 per cent) and those with post-graduate qualifications (47 per cent) were also more friendly.
The report writer suggests Auckland support might be because we are bigger users of the more favourably regarded services - passports, citizenship and education and training.
The only cheery note for public servants is that if only 62 per cent of Kiwis expect quality service from them, our expectations of private sector service is even more jaundiced at 58 per cent. The non-government sector is dragged down by our low expectation of internet providers (39 per cent), telephone companies (41 per cent) and power providers (53 per cent.) They'll be depressed, however, to know they score below even credit card companies (63 per cent) and "bank or finance companies" (72 per cent).
Now I wouldn't want you to think I've gone soft on the bureaucrats. It's more the sympathy of one misunderstood and hard done-by "profession" for another.
In last year's Readers Digest survey of New Zealand's most trusted professions, journalists were ranked 34 out of 40, down at the bottom of the barrel with real estate agents, psychics, sex workers, car salesmen, telemarketers and politicians. Kiwis had more trust in their bartender (29), personal trainer (21), financial planner (27) and chef (18) than we purveyors of bad - and good - news.
The more "scientific" Morgan Poll of December 2005 had a similar low opinion of journalists, 65 per cent of New Zealanders saying media organisations were more interested in making money than informing society. As for trusting us, I don't know which is worse, that 52 per cent of Kiwis don't trust newspaper journalists to tell the truth, or that radio talkback hosts, of all people, scored more trustworthy on 50 per cent.
Still, it doesn't pay to take any of this too seriously. In the same breath as saying they don't trust us to tell the truth. 63 per cent say "the media overall is a force for good in the world".
Of course, the public servants are hardly likely to feel any fellow feeling with us. No doubt they blame journalists for their woeful rankings in public estimation. But could I suggest they not take these exercises in self-flagellation so seriously - or spend so much of our money on them. After all, given the hidden bitchiness lurking beneath the Kiwi breast, they're never going to get the result they crave.
Instead, they should try lying back and enjoying being one of the hated professions. We astrologers, and journalists, and car salesman and politicians are more fun than the pilots and vets and marriage celebrants that everyone claims to love anyway.