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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This was written before the election outcome is known. It looks at the part of the executive which is not elected: the public servants and advisors. Steven Joyce, National’s campaign manager, must have thought he had Labour out cold when he claimed that its spending plans announced during the election were enormous and unsustainable. He…
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The policy dimension of the election appears to be about the concerns with past restraints on government spending and the consequential social failures. But whatever the rhetoric, implementation of campaign promises is going to be much harder. Last Saturday, the Minister for Social Housing, Amy Adams, admitted her government had a poor record on social…
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With most parties having announced their lists for the next election, we need to think about how the system works. As some day it may happen that an MP must be found They’re put upon the list – I’ve got a little list Of political offenders who are always safe and sound And who never…
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AUT Briefing Papers May 16, 2018 The neologism ‘Austerian’ is a portmanteau of ‘austerity’ and ‘Austrian’ (School of Economics). It became extensively used after the Global Financial Crisis. It describes the policies of those countries which had to restrain public and private spending because lenders were unwilling to provide the funds for their budget deficits….
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Past policies of banging on about economic growth have failed. A new report argues we should strategise differently with more comprehensive goals. The response by some regional leaders to Julian Wood’s Growing Beyond Growth: Rethinking the Goals of Regional Development while not unexpected was so typical of much public policy discussion. They had not read (or understood)…
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AUT Briefing Papers May 30, 2016 Despite the public’s desire for more government spending there has been little increase in the aggregate level of government spending relative to GDP over the last 20 years. There was a slight rise immediately after the GFC, because GDP stagnated. Government spending as a percent of GDP is now lower that…
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AUT Briefing Papers February 22, 2016 The 1989 Public Finance Act distinguished ‘outputs’ from ‘outcomes’. Outputs are what a department (or, more generally, an agent) can deliver while outcomes are what the minister (or, more generally, the principal) actually wants. Thus a minister may want, on behalf of the country, a high level of education…
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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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AUT Briefing Papers May 30, 2015 Third term governments always look tired. Policies developed in opposition have been implemented (usually with more difficulty and less effect than expected), ambitions – such as exporting 40 percent of GDP – are nowhere near deliverable (and in truth, never were), unexpected issues prove tiresome and intractable and whenever…
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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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Wellington’s disdain for local councils makes the present elections almost meaningless. Listener: 3 October, 2013. Keywords: Governance; The abolition of the provinces in 1876 made New Zealand one of the most centralised states in the world. Not completely, however – a second level of regional, city and district councils exists that we…
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Public Sector Conference: 5-6 September, 2013 Published in Foreign Control Watchdog 134, January 2014: p.46-50 Keywords: Business & Finance; Globalisation & Trade; Governance; Political Economy & History; If you look at the top ten companies on the New Zealand share market, you will find that half were once owned by the government or…
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Managers don’t always do what their shareholders want, which may explain the SkyCity deal oddities. Listener: 30 March , 2013. Keywords: Business & Finance; Governance; Richina Pacific has hardly reported to its shareholders since 2008, according to NZ Herald business columnist Brian Gaynor. By ignoring them, Richina Pacific gave no information to…
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