The weekend’s events in Chile and their impact in New Zealand showed us some important things about the nature of public service.

In an emergency, we can rely on our public broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, to keep us informed. Unlike other broadcasters, Radio New Zealand set aside its normal programming to make sure that we all had the information we needed to keep safe. That’s what the public sector ethos is about. If you rely on commercial broadcasters for your information, bad luck. Mustn’t get in the way of those advertising breaks.

Without fuss, public servants turned out over the weekend to staff the emergency services. There were some tough calls to make and no doubt there will now be voices raised saying the Ministry of Civil Defence over-reacted. That’s also what the public sector ethos is about – acting to preserve public safety and keeping the public interest always in mind. And soaking up the criticism of those who are wise in hindsight.

Some early comment on the devastation in Chile indicates that the quality of Chilean buildings and the rigour of the building code there have helped save many lives. We should take heed of that. When Rodney Hide, in the name of deregulation, tries to tinker with the standards of our buildings and building inspections, let’s not forget about public safety in our earthquake-prone country.

“Public sector professionalism is important to the National Government.  The professionalism we value is the public service telling the Government what it doesn’t want hear. Ministers may well disagree with the advice they receive, but open and respectful debate is the best way to make progress.”  Fine words from Bill English back in September 2009, speaking to a packed audience of public servants at the Institute of Public Administration.

The reality is turning out to be somewhat different.

Vernon Small’s story in the Dom Post says that the Ministry of Justice has been blocked from giving policy advice to the select committee considering the ‘three strikes’ law.

So much for “free and frank advice”.  Contrary to Bill English’s rhetoric, it appears we have got a government that doesn’t want to hear anything that doesn’t fit with its own ideas.  I presume  the Ministry of Justice has research and policy findings that cast doubt on the effectiveness of  a  three strikes law.  Important information to hear, you’d think, if you were planning to introduce a piece of legislation.

It’s a shameful decision on the part of National and Act to gag the public servants who have important information that should be listened to.  The Government, of course,  doesn’t have to follow that advice – they are the ones elected to make the law, not officials – but good law needs to be based on good information and a rational assessment of the implications.

It’s a weak government that can’t cope with contrary views.  And a bad move on Simon Power’s part to meekly stand aside and let the police lead the policy work on this law.  That’s not their job and he must know that.  If he doesn’t support this law, then he should show some leadership.

Setting up Whanau Ora is testing the relationship between National and the Maori Party.  The Maori Party, and especially Tariana Turia, have been absolutely consistent in promoting this as an initiative for Maori from the outset, so John Key has been slow off the mark in suggesting it is actually for all.  Perhaps he should take a look at Strengthening Families, which has been working this very model for some years, albeit within government agencies, not via a separate funding arm.

There are some other big questions about Whanau Ora:

• Why establish a new organisation to allocate funding when that is already the role of the Ministry of Social Development?
• Why will the rules on accountability for funding be different for Whanau Ora contracts than for all other social service providers?
• Is finding going to be taken away from Child, Youth and family to fund Whanau Ora?
• What assessment has been made of the impact on government agencies which will still need to provide services for the most serious needs – child abuse, child and youth offending, serious mental health disorders, learning difficulties.  Will these services for serious needs be cut?

Given the likely cost of the programme, the challenges for funding accountability and the possibility of duplicating systems and services, it’s essential there is informed and open debate.  Releasing the taskforce report would be a start.

The Maryanne Thompson saga is finally drawing to a close with her guilty plea over falsifying qualifications.  The oddest thing about the court case yesterday was the State Services Commissioner presenting a Victim Impact Statement.  Who’s the victim here?  Apparently the State services as a whole and all State servants.  I don’t think  so.

I don’t see State servants being or acting as victims.  They haven’t and don’t need to take on board the responsibility for one individual’s wrong-doing.  In any walk of life, there will always be individuals who flout the rules, take advantage of trust, or are plain bad.  When someone in the business world breaks the law (not an infrequent occurrence), no one suggests the whole system of private enterprise has been victimised by this.

Iain Rennie was right to say that there is an impact on the general perception of trustworthiness of State services.  But Len Cook, the new head of the Institute of Public Administration, hit the nail right on the head when he said the real issue was how the system deals with individual cases of wrongdoing or corruption.

Trust and trustworthiness are vital ingredients of our system of government and public administration.  One falsified cv doesn’t undermine that, stupid (and unnecessary) as the action was.  But please, Iain Rennie, let’s not go down the path of claiming collective victimhood.

It’s great to see librarians come out fighting against a plan by Tauranga City Council to put a 50c per book charge on fiction. We’ve heard a lot of complaints in recent days about New Zealand’s shonky infrastructure, with electricity and telephone system failures. But the Tauranga proposal hits at another kind of infrastructure, a more fragile one – our collective intellectual capital. At a time when there is widespread concern about literacy rates and the impact of text-speak on the ability of younger New Zealanders to write well, the idea of putting a levy on reading is just plain bizarre. Not to mention putting New Zealand out of step with the rest of the western world, which recognises libraries as one of the foundations of the educational, information and cultural systems.

Free public libraries are a great public good in New Zealand and we have a proud tradition of excellent public library services. Far from being a “burden on the ratepayer”, they are probably one of the most valued local public services and the most widely-used.

And librarians are not afraid to stand up in defence of these bedrock values. The PSA – which represents most librarians – will be standing with them.

Here we go again.  Obviously John Key and Bill English didn’t make New Year’s resolutions to stop attacking the public service and especially its record on productivity.  The Herald reported Key’s comments that getting “value for money from state services” might mean job cuts as well as state servants working harder.

The PSA approached Bill English back in August and again in September 2009 with specific ideas to improve productivity.  No reply from Bill.  So we have deduced this is an ideological matter for the National government, not a genuine attempt to harness fresh thinking to make real gains.

An interesting post by Tim Watkin on Pundit has pointed out that, far from being bloated, the state sector is “borderline anorexic”.  Watkin’s article and the statistics in it are well worth a read, as are the comments that follow.  Watkin concludes:  “A strong public service remains the foundation stone of a decent society…Any chance we can value its work, rather than constantly maligning it?”

I hope someone puts these comments in front of Key and English.  If Key’s Government is serious about lifting public service productivity, it should focus on making public service employers more flexible and open to new ideas. Much has been said about importance of frontline staff, but little attempt has been made to engage them in day-to-day decision-making and use their valuable experiences and insights to build more responsive organisations.

Endless tinkering to shed jobs here and there will do nothing to build an efficient public sector for the 21st century.

It’s been a busy year for the PSA and for all those who work in the public sector. We’re looking forward to the holiday break. We will resume blogging early in the new year.  Best wishes to all  for  the holiday season.

Here we go again. Another taskforce serving as a stalking horse for the ‘free market’ policies the government would love to implement but knows the public is nervous about.  The latest government-appointed Trojan horse to issue a report is the Capital Market Development Taskforce.

It’s recommending  opening up state assets to the market. In other words partial privatisation. Or as the taskforce puts it: “broadening the range of high-quality equity offerings for retail investors by encouraging partial listings of central and local government-owned companies…”

Taskforce chair Rob Cameron says there needs to be large scale sales of state assets.  And Commerce Minister Simon Power says the government will look at this – though not in its first term.

But I think we can all see where this is heading.  Partial privatisation in the first term.  The full monty in term two.

The government is already actively pursuing its privatisation agenda. We’ve got private management of public prisons, possible private ownership and management of schools, possible sell-off of water from local councils. All the signs point to full-scale privatisations in a second term.

The question is why? If these state assets are such high quality, why would the current owners- the public who’ve paid for them through their taxes – want to sell them? Who benefits? ‘Free marketers’ hungry for productive assets to feed on after bringing the world’s financial markets to the brink of collapse.

Hearing Bill English say something I can agree with is always worth a comment, so it was good to hear him say that he is looking for a stronger dose of reality from the tax task force than he – and we – got from Don Brash’s productivity task force. Let’s hope we see that.

I’d like to know what it cost the government to have Don Brash prepare and deliver what amounts to a party political manifesto for Act. And to rub salt in the wound, it appears that the task force will be kept on to deliver a further report each year. Given that the report has been rubbished by everyone except the Business Roundtable and Act, it’s hard to see the justification for keeping Don Brash on the public payroll. Not exactly a shining example of public sector productivity. But there seems few limits on the government’s willingness to spend public money to keep its coalition partners happy.

There is something particularly hypocritical about the behaviour of Act MPs. The party of small government and individual responsibility seems very willing to milk the public purse for all its worth. At least Rodney Hide had the decency (and political nous) to apologise for his travel spending. Not so Roger Douglas, who is apparently unrepentant. He is clearly becoming an embarrassment even to Act – Rodney Hide conspicuously did not defend Roger Douglas when questioned recently on Radio NZ about his travel spending.

The coalition agreement between Act and National seems designed to use public money to prop up Act. It’s time National got some new friends.

Yet again, New Zealand’s public service is rated at the least corrupt in the world by Transparency International.  It seems the reputation and value of our public service is well-recognised abroad but the absence of any acknowledgement of this by the government, including the Minister of State Services, is noticeable.

By a curious coincidence, this announcement was made on the same day as the Treasury came out with its well-worn advice to the government to cut public spending drastically.  Perhaps it’s time they got some new thinking at Treasury as no-one in this (or the previous) government seems to think their advice is credible.

John Key doubted their analysis, Bill English commented that they have been saying the same thing for the past 20-30 years and he did not plan to follow their advice.  He does, however, plan to cut planned public spending at the next Budget.  We know that departments have been directed yet again to prune their budgets and that another round of cost-cutting by the razor gang is planned for next March.

Next year’s Budget will be a tough one for the public service, which is already under pressure from the 2000 job reduction imposed on it this year.  And wage pressures will need to be dealt with in the Budget.  The government’s intended wage freeze is simply not working, as can be seen by the industrial action being taken by Ministry of Justice and Parliamentary Services PSA members at the moment.

Transparency International gives us one reason why we should value our public servants.  We’d like to see this government value their own public service too.