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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A comparison of the coalition party agreements shows commonalities but also some serious divergencies. They are mainly about returning to 2017 when National lost power. The two coalition agreements – one National and ACT, the other National and New Zealand First – are more than policy documents. They also describe the processes of the new…
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Banning mobile phones in schools points to wider issues. I don’t have enough information to evaluate National’s election proposal to ban mobile phones in schools, but something has to be said about how they plan to implement it. Compulsion from the top is characteristic of much New Zealand policy reflecting our centralist approach to government….
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It is the professionalism – competence and integrity – of the doctors, nurses and technicians who provide the care which obscures the managerial failure. The column-blog, Otaihanga Second Opinion is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the health sector. It is written by Ian Powell, who was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical…
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It is too easy to react to a problem rather than to tackle it thoughtfully. It’s Friday night. You plan to have a couple of drinks with friends. Saturday morning you can’t remember how many you had – was it seven? – but you wish you hadn’t. What you are showing in economic terms is…
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The Chatham Islands may offer insights on to how to govern New Zealand better. It is said that our first minister of regional development – in the early 1970s – claimed that he wanted all our regions to have above average incomes. Duh! You would expect that there would be some variation in regional incomes….
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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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AUT Briefing Papers May 22, 2018 The 1989 Public Finance Act adopted a new approach to the presentation of the government’s accounts. Its purpose was to enhance the government’s management of financial flows by combining them all into a single set of accounts. But as so typically happens, a measurement system for one purpose is…
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Coalition governments are a consequence of MMP. They may better reflect us and our democratic aspirations than the Winner-Takes-All ones of the past. The public understanding of election outcomes remains dominated by a misunderstood account of the old electoral system which was not based on proportional representation. One commentator said confidently that the party with…
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New Zealand’s electoral system gives it a parliament which represents voters. Its winner-takes-all executive government, however, remains unrepresentative.* (This is a follow on from the earlier column on coalitions.) This paper tries to evaluate various coalitions on the basis of their political ideologies. It uses the scores given to parties by the TVNZ website Vote-Compass,…
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