Hardly anyone says what are ‘the principles of the treaty’. The courts’ interpretation restrain the New Zealand Government. While they about protecting a particular community, those restraints apply equally to all community in a liberal democracy – including a single person. Treaty principles were introduced into the governance of New Zealand by the Treaty of Waitangi Act…
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The claim that there are currently 14 layers of management at Health New Zealand, raises wider issues of how we organise systems. I want to write a column about current proposals to redisorganise Health New Zealand but, frustratingly, the Coalition Government has not released evidence of its claim that the successor to the District Health…
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It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to analyse the trend. In today’s…
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The Government says it will give localities more control over healthcare decisions. But how? New Zealand’s political reflex is that any problem can be resolved by further centralisation. Students will be officially banned from having cell phones at school from Term 2. The decision could have been left to individual schools. Each knows a lot…
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Note written for circulation January 2024 In 2023 the New Zealand Health System was further centralised. As usual, the reasons given for the redisorganisation were unclear, thin and unconvincing. There have been no immediate benefits evident from the new structure; experience suggests that if there are any, they will take time to manifest themselves. Downsides…
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Review in ‘Newsroom’ 9 May, 2023 In 1972, The New Zealand Journal of History published the article “Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Texts and Translations” by Ruth Ross (1920-1982). Its impact continues 50 years later, and is likely to remain significant in another 50 years. It’s one of the most influential pieces of work by a…
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Presentation to the 2021 Conference of Theatre Managers & Educators, Dunedin 5-7 May. Today I am going to discuss the governments plans for the health system. Let me begin with an admission about my perspective. Many New Zealanders are more centralist in their view of the governance of society than I am. I come from…
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Presentation to the 2021 Conference of Theatre Managers & Educators, Dunedin 5-7 May. A few weeks ago, the government announced the next health sector redisorganisation. So I have scrapped the presentations I promised, in favour of an account of what is happening and where we might be going. Today’s presentation is centred on a history…
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Centralising the Public Health System The proposed health redisorganisation seeks to markedly centralise the health system. Is this grab for power justified; will it work? The Cabinet paper’s justification of the proposed changes is sevenfold. The first two are about Maori issues. One is constitutional, arguing that the ‘public health system does not meet the…
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The recognition that there is a media problem is correct, but the chosen solution is likely to be disastrous. Whether it intends or not, the government is embarked on a course to undermine Radio New Zealand. It wants to merge TVNZ and RNZ in order, it says, to strengthen the media. ‘Merge’ is a weasel…
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On Sunday 9 February 2020, I drafted a Pundit column, discussing the announced proposal to downgrade Concert FM. My practice is to let columns stew before posting them – in this case the plan was to put it up on Tuesday. By Monday the policy turmoil had changed markedly and I had to make major…
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Presentation to the Symposium: ‘Wellbeing’, Budget Responsibility Rules, and the Public Finance Act (15 April, 2019, Victoria University of Wellington) [1] Macroeconomic analysis, research, policy and forecasting is based upon two major data bases. One, provided by Statistics New Zealand, is centred on the National Accounts, but there are many additional elements. The other, which…
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I was commissioned by the ‘Dominion Post’ to write an opinion piece as part of their review of the anniversary of the 2018 Census. This is a slightly revised version of what they published. The main article is ‘365 days and still counting: Census results still nowhere to be seen’. An earlier ‘Pundit’ column is ‘The…
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The Issue John Stuart Mill argued it was better to be an unhappy philosopher than a happy pig; that all transactions and assets are not of equal value. However, the New Zealand Government system largely treats heritage assets similarly to other assets. Today’s governance needs to move past the happy-pig approach to one which recognises…
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Allow me to share a puzzle. Public sector outsourcing (a.k.a. ‘contracting out’) has been increasing in recent decades. It is not the same as ‘privatisation’ because the government retains the role as a funder but it outsources the task to a private provider – which may be a corporation or non-government organisation. A recent prominent…
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Are we paying enough attention to bureaucracy? Are the current bureaucratic pressures changing the nature of society — and are they doing so for the public good? David Graeber may be best remembered for coining Occupy Wall Street’s ‘We are the 99 percent’. In the literary world the LSE-based anthropologist is well known for his Debt,…
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Policy announcements do not always reflect careful analysis. Too often the unstated political considerations have too much influence. I was once involved with a ministry under pressure over the failure as the result of a very unusual accident of a piece of equipment for which it had a vague responsibility. The public wanted something done….
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Do We Need Larger Local Authorities? The Wellington kerfuffle over whether its eight territorial local authorities and the regional council should unite into a single regional entity might at first seem oh-so-Wellington – petty parochialism with small-minded politicians keen to maintain their remuneration. But other regions are struggling with the same problem. Unnoticed is a…
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Policymaking is too often based on what someone thinks is a good idea. Listener: 5 December, 2013 Keywords: Governance; Growth & Innovation; The Prime Minister’s chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, has called for the greater use of evidence-based policy formation. It arises out of his medical background, where there has been…
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This is a commentary of a Treasury document available at http://www.treasury.govt.nz/abouttreasury/higherlivingstandards/hls-ag-risks-jan13.pdf The living standards framework is at: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/abouttreasury/higherlivingstandards I was asked to do this comment in a hurry. Some of the thinking is as superficial as that of a university professor (as we say in the trade). Keywords:…
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