No to another mega-Ministry

One of the ideas getting traction within the Government is the idea of merging the Ministry for the Environment (MfE), Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD) and the Ministry of Transport (MoT) into a mega agency. The “logic” behind it is threefold:

• More integrated policy thinking that will not only enable more housing to be built, but also the infrastructure to support it;

• Diluting the de-growth and pro-central planning culture of MfE (which most recently decided it was appropriate to submit on the Regulatory Standards Bill);

• Saving money (through administrative rationing).

This is a mistake, because its theoretical basis is rooted in some assumptions that don’t bear close scrutiny. Working backwards the notion that mega-departments are more efficient is largely a chimera. The larger the bureaucracy the slower it works and the less responsive it is, and it more difficult it is to retain specialised knowledge and experience as it gets swamped within multiple layers of management. Treasury likes mega-agencies for two reasons:

• Fewer managers is said to be more efficient;

• Fewer agencies makes them easier to monitor and hold accountable.

Unfortunately, this ignores the behavioural responses of public servants to this sort of structure. In a large department it becomes harder to get the attention of the top layers of management. In some cases that can help, because clever and competent public servants can get on with their work unbothered by the chief executive or deputies, but that also means the less clever and competent have their work not subject to the same scrutiny. The Adam Smith Institute in the UK has called for the UK Home Office to be broken up for exactly that reason. The incremental savings of a few fewer managers (which is disputable when you look at the structure of MBIE – New Zealand’s existing mega-Ministry – which has large units, with branches under them and sub-branches) is lost when there is significant failure both in delivery and public policy.  

The UK already has had experience merging Transport, Environment and Local Government, from 1997 until 2002. Transport was split out again because the cultures of the agencies clashed internally, slowing down progress and making it difficult to get institutional focus on major reforms.  

Australia by contrast does have a mega-agency responsibility for transport policy at the Commonwealth level, in an organisation called DITRDCA (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Culture and the Arts), which struggles to retain institutional knowledge in any segments of its activity. However, as a Federation, many of the functions in those sectors are carried out by States and Territories, so it is less of a day to day concern. Similar mega agencies do not exist at the State level.

The benefit of smaller agencies is that they can be nimble and responsive, and can pivot quickly when policy priorities change.  They can readily collaborate and work together with each other, if there is clear project leadership across agencies. The idea that collaboration within a large agency, with managers and branches with their own interests is necessarily easier than between smaller agencies is largely theoretical, because it depends on the individuals. Bear in mind MoT implemented radical restructuring of ports, airports, land transport funding, the governance and delivery of urban passenger transport all as a small agency, stripping down its functions over the years.  It's not clear what radical reforms MBIE as a major agency has done, and it is abundantly clear that DIA, with its de facto oversight of the water sector (i.e. next to none) did little until the Ardern Government saw it as a way to bail out local government and start to implement the principles of He Puapua (which remains on ice). 

On the second point, the idea that a key reason to merge agencies is to dilute the culture of the one you don’t like, or which is corrosive to government policy is not a good way of diluting the poison, because it spreads the poison across a wider field. The answer for the Ministry for the Environment is not to merge it, but to cull its responsibilities and split what remains among other agencies.

The Partnerships, Investment and Enablement business group should be abolished because Government should not be seeking to “tangibly shift mindsets and change behaviours in New Zealand through effective partnering and engagement within the public and private sectors”. The culture of MfE is anti-development, anti-growth and it the behaviours that need changing are those ones.  

At best the Environmental Management and Adaptation business group should be placed within the Department of Internal Affairs to work with local government, specifically regional councils on their statutory function, and the Climate Change Mitigation and Resource Efficiency business group should be part of MBIE, which has oversight of economic regulation of natural resources.  

It is so obvious that the next time a Labour-led Government takes power, almost certainly with the Greens, that a Ministry of Housing, Infrastructure and the Environment would be rebranded into a Ministry of Sustainable Development or the like. The culture that would be dominant will be the one inherited from MfE and will seek to decimate private provision of housing, as well as turn transport policy into one big behavioural change programme that treats active travel and public transport as being good, at any cost, while treating private motoring and the movement of freight by road as being malignant. 

One of the legacies of Labour Governments is that they implement structural reform of Government that National Governments rarely reverse.  Don’t forget the optics of splitting MfE (“integrating environment across policy”) may not be great and of course the Opposition will cry that it is about decimating the environment, but the public largely will not care (other than the ones who vote Green anyway). Splitting MfE into Internal Affairs and MBIE will dilute MfE’s culture because it divides it. Merging it with MHUD and MoT keeps it intact, despite pleas from some that it will dilute the priority of the environment, it will place it in the centre of two agencies seeking to resolve issues that are, in part because of the prioritisation of the environment through the RMA that stops stuff being built.

The MHUD is essentially an oversight agency for Kainga Ora, as well as the regulator of rental housing and other accommodation. The synergies with the MoT are weak, especially given MoT’s functions range from monitoring the land transport funding and regulatory sector, through to the economic functions of all transport modes. There is little that MHUD can bring to aviation policy, and indeed most of the transport policy issues affecting MHUD are undertaken by local government. 

If there is a case for a merge, then MBIE makes more sense for MoT than MHUD, because MBIE does look after network industries in infrastructure, such as energy and communications, but that was tried before in the late 1990s and ultimately abandoned. 

So the idea of merging agencies should be put in the bin. There is a better case for reviewing their functions and determining whether some should exist at all, and if so, who is better placed to manage them.  Putting climate change policy in the DIA or MBIE is likely to be preferable than having it dominating housing and transport.

Merging MfE, MHUD and MoT smells of something that the Greens or TOP (remember them?) would advocate. MfE is by far the agency with the most dominant culture, and it is one that is philosophically antagonistic to the Government it is meant to be serving.  It should not poison housing and transport policy with that culture. 

The Government should run a mile from it.

Local government will not be constrained by the current proposals

Like many one of my biggest concerns about local government is how unconstrained it is about what activities it enters into, whether it be an impost directly on ratepayers through spending, or an indirect impost in the time of Councillors and Council staff misdirected away from core business into other activities. Whether it is foreign affairs, shiny things (typically sport, arts, culture, entertainment), unviable businesses or any other "nice to do" activities, local government tends to attract a greater proportion of people who promise to "do stuff" which is typically not a promise to stick to the core.

It is rare to get candidates for local election who promise to simply ensure the roads are well maintained, the rubbish collection remains reliable, litter and graffiti are addressed, (all types of) water infrastructure is managed efficiently and effectively, and parks are well maintained.  It's especially rare to get any who want to get Councils out of the way of building more homes, commercial or industrial property, or who want to make it easier to set up new businesses (unless they are tiny businesses, in Council premises, of certain pre-selected types).

So while I was hopeful that Simon Watts would announce a sea-change in the legislation governing local government I ended up being sorely disappointed.  His main announcement is the abolition (again!) of the "four-wellbeings".  This should be familiar with those who know about the local government sector (unfortunately in a previous career I got to know about local government legislation), because the Key Government did it before. You can be forgiven for not knowing that because it made not a jot of difference to local government, except perhaps slowing down its growth.  

So while I think all of the proposals have some merit, they don't tackle the core cause of the problem, which is the "power of general competence" which Sandra Lee under the Clark Government got passed to reform local government. It was part of a vision of expansionist local government (which Lee, when she was in local government cheered on with alacrity) that represents the wet dream of the hard-left.  The idea that "communities" (activist groups) would engage continuously with democratically elected representatives to get local government to address the cultural, social, environmental and economic wellbeing issues of their "communities".  Of course the only ways local government can "address" these things is through its two instruments of compulsion: Taxing and subsidising (mostly rates, but also fees on anything the Council does and of course lobbying for central government to give it more power to tax) and regulating (forcing people to do what it wants, banning them from doing what they don't).  It's the idea that "highly engaged" communities (which doesn't realistically include most entrepreneurs or the self-employed or busy workers, because they don't have the time) pushing everyone else around with a "democratic mandate". The sort that comes up with "Should Wellington become a sister city with Ramallah?"

My friend Peter Cresswell writes adroitly on the debacle of the power of general competence (dare I note that Greater Wellington Regional Council Chair Daran Ponter, pictured on PC's blogpost, was once a bureaucrat who worked on the Local Government Act reforms in the early 2000s).

I wrote a bit about it around a generation ago.  It's not called that explicitly in the Local Government Act 2002, but it is Section 12 in the Act:

12  Status and powers

(1) A local authority is a body corporate with perpetual succession.

(2) For the purposes of performing its role, a local authority has—

(a) full capacity to carry on or undertake any activity or business, do any act, or enter into any transaction; and

(b) for the purposes of paragraph (a), full rights, powers, and privileges.

As you can see it gives local government carte blanche to do just about anything it likes. This is at the heart of the problem.

If Simon Watts is NOT proposing to replace Section 12(2) with something else, then he is tinkering around the edges of the problem. I'm not surprised he isn't proposing to replace it, because the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) would not have advised in favour of it. 

DIA supports the power of general competence because it mopped up a wide range of highly specified powers that previously existed that meant that local government couldn't undertake activities unless legislation specifically said it could. Now the law says it can do pretty much whatever it likes (with some provisions constraining regional councils and territorial authorities overlapping).  A Council could set up a restaurant, a school, a taxi company, a radio station, a supermarket and a brothel. A Council can publish books, make movies, open up a liaison office in Equatorial Guinea, campaign in favour of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and open a nudist camp. 

DIA would not have wanted the repeal of Section 12(2) because they would say it would require a "lot of work" (for them) to identify what Councils do and don't do now so activities wouldn't be suddenly banned. Frankly that would be a rather good thing.  It would be simple enough to give Councils powers over their own property and then list the types of property Councils should not be allowed to own, and businesses it should not be allowed to own (a good start would be any type of business already existing within its boundaries).  Then allow Councils to only exercise their legal obligations under any other legislation (e.g., RMA and its replacement) and limit it to rubbish collection, public spaces (parks, pools, coastlines, rivers). 

The debacle over "three waters" has pretty much proven why the "power of general competence" was a mistake.  We have had over 20 years of local government being given full capacity to look after water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure whether as a business or any other form of structure, and many have failed abjectly to do so.  With a few exceptions, local government simply isn't up to managing large complex infrastructure networks as far too few Councillors and well-meaning local bureaucrats have the skills and experience to do so.  The local road network is far from perfect, but at least NZTA and its predecessors for the last thirty five years have had some oversight of performance so that the network isn't crumbling. 

Some may say the problem is Councils don't have enough powers to tax and regulate (that would be the Greens who rarely find a problem they don't think would be solved by forcing people to do what they think is best for them), some may say the problem is too many small Councils without the capacity to be more responsible, but then Auckland Council is hardly the shining city on the hill to emulate.  Some may say the problem is that "the community" doesn't vote enough, and maybe teenagers who are deemed not fit to decide on whether they consume alcohol, tobacco or pornography should be allowed to vote.

It's pretty basic. We have had over twenty years of the "power of general competence" and Councils have proven incapable of managing their assets effectively, and most think that their problems can only be fixed by getting other politicians to make taxpayers bail them out (that's, in part, what Labour was going to do with Three Waters). 

It's time to end the power of general competence. Tell local government exactly what its functions are.  Don't put up with excuses from DIA about how long it will take, just get some clever people together to do it. You can be sure if something is missed out, then the affected local authorities will cry loudly at the Select Committee stage of the Bill and you can decide if it is worth addressing then. If the local authorities fail to identify that pending legislation will ban something they are currently doing, then it's pretty obvious how incompetent they are.

Oh and yes, you should cap rates increases to inflation.  

Who likes swinging the wrecking ball?

 Popular vulgarian journalist Andrea Vance has written this:

"With every lurch toward the extreme, politicians become more brittle, reactive and combative... Ministers no longer explain or debate. They post. They lash out at critics in increasingly personal, petulant terms. And they don’t even pretend to hide contempt for the media....

Whether it’s tantrums, teardowns or rule-breaking, the result is the same. Compromise is out, consensus is dead and the behaviour trickles down.

It corrodes public trust and in turn feeds cynicism and ultimately disengagement.

Voters are left wondering: if nothing lasts, and no one listens, why bother participating at all?

There are no rules anymore. In their place, we’re left with grievance, score-settling, and a political class increasingly reckless with power."

Two months ago she wrote about how the Finance Minister did "girl math" and of course famously:

"So long as you are prepared to be a c*nt to the women who birth your kids, school your offspring and wipe the arse of your elderly parents while you stand on their shoulders to earn your six-figure, taxpayer-funded pay packet"

Who is brittle, reactive, combative, lashing out, engaging in a tantrum, grievance and score-settling now?

Does Dame Anne Salmond really want to debate the Regulatory Standards Bill?

Dame Anne Salmond is upset at the use of pejoratives to describe some opponents of the Regulatory Standards Bill. I can understand not liking the use of terms that are explicitly or implicitly abusive, as it is hardly helpful. She doesn't like being called "Victim of the Day" by David Seymour, although his piece on her was not personal.   I struggle to see why an article that largely is about rebutting her original piece is initiating "an online campaign of intimidation" as she claims. Indeed the comments responding to Seymour's post have plenty criticising him as well as supporting him.  She may think I am part of a campaign of intimidation, but she claims debate is fine, so let's have that. She has a wide platform as a public figure, so, as with other critics like Metiria Turei and Willie Jackson (past and present MPs), engaging publicly on an issue means people will support and oppose. 

Let’s remember this is an academic that once wrote that unless you can read the original language any text is written in, you are not entitled to have an opinion on it.  She talks of wanting to “silence” critics but is adept at finding reasons to tell those she criticises effectively that they are not entitled to express an opinion on Te Tiriti.  This is someone who claims the Regulatory Standards Bill expresses a “contempt for liberal democracy” who expresses contempt for people commenting on Te Tiriti if they are not sufficiently fluent in Te Reo. 

Her criticism of the Regulatory Standards Bill strongly infers that those advocating it don’t believe in “public goals and values” (she means the public goals and values she supports).  She opposes it because it lacks a strong democratic mandate, on the basis that most voters didn’t vote for ACT.  Has she ever said the same about Bills advanced by the Greens or Te Pati Maori? 

She opposes the principles focusing on individual rights and private property, which at least she’s explicit about. I’d argue that opposing such principles is “dangerous” in itself, and is the source of much of the harm seen today.  What is fundamentally wrong with respecting people’s autonomy over their bodies and property, and having a society based on that? (leaving aside how inconsistent ACT is in defending this - which is fair criticism. ACT is no libertarian party, and never has been).  

She claims that having an ideological oversight over the legislative and regulatory activities of all government agencies is a “naked power grab”. Power for whom? The Regulatory Standards Board has no power to do anything other than to report, as it would be up to the elected government of the day to respond to it, or ignore it.  What is she really afraid of, that the governments she supports would be asked to justify why they are overriding individual rights and property rights to implement policies she supports?  

If individual rights and property rights are so “dangerous” then she should have no fear whatsoever of a government she supports implementing the policies she supports saying “individual rights are secondary to us banning, compelling or taxing people for this “public purpose””. Sunlight showing the very clear trade-offs between individual rights and the politics of collectivists. 

It takes nothing away from the Executive or Parliament, it is not a constitution upholding those rights and being able to veto policies that degrade them (if only!).

However, Salmond’s real view on this is that it is sinister, because she doesn’t think ACT has honest intent (because she opposes the reform of the pay equity legislation applied retrospectively).  That’s not playing the ball, that’s playing the man.  She thinks ACT wants to undermine liberal democracy, which is a serious accusation.  Bear in mind she claims the Government is waging a "war on women". 

Is this the rhetoric of someone who wants fact based debate, or someone happy to jump in, boots and all, into the world of political pejoratives?

She claims on LinkedIn that (the Regulatory Standards Bill) "rhetoric used to support this bill talks about ‘equality,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom, ’trying to force indigenous and other New Zealanders to abide by libertarian understandings of these words – thus stripping them of their rights and freedoms"

Really? How does anyone "force" anyone else to abide by the meaning of any word? How does this even make sense? 

She says there are not enough checks and balances on executive power but claims this Bill will be an example of this, even though it can only come into power by being passed by a majority in Parliament. It can of course be repealed likewise.  This is simply wrong.

The “worst” effect she claims is that the bill “attempts to tie the hands of the state in regulating private activities or initiatives that create public harm”. This isn’t actually what is in the Bill, but an interpretation.  Lot of people claim “public harm” from activities that generate private benefit, ranging from what people consume or do with their bodies through to businesses they engage in with consenting adults.  =Of course, the Bill simply states as a principle that legislation should not take, impair property unless fair compensation is given for that.  =All the Bill requires is that this be reported on, and then Parliament decides whether to do so, or not.  

Then she talks about the "accumulation" of wealth and power by the “few” at the “expense of the many”, which is political agitprop. Of course, globally she is one of the “few” as are most people in New Zealand, who have incomes and wealth exceeding that of the majority of the global population.  She continues with rhetoric of “over-emphasis on private property and individual rights”. She thinks that is what happens in the US, a country with eminent domain over private property to enable private development (an egregious violation of property rights), a country with a long litany of laws against individual freedom ranging from what one can ingest into one’s body, through to the endless need for permits to undertake mundane trading activities.

Salmond appears not to have read the Bill.  If she has, she hasn't understood it.  Maybe she simply imputes sinister intent to ACT, by claiming it is all "doublespeak"?

It's easy to see why David Seymour would get frustrated, with rhetoric of that of Marxist student activists. This Bill does not attack the “fundamental rights of New Zealanders” as Salmond claims and puts up zero evidence for.  What it would do is subject the policies she supports to the scrutiny as to why individual rights and property rights should be reduced to achieve the objectives she may be in supportive of.  Governments could then ignore that or respect it.

Why is that controversial, unless you think it doesn't really matter if individual freedom and private property rights are eroded for "the common good"?

Ending Iran's nuclear programme is a must, defeating the Islamic Republic is the ideal

You'd have to be an Islamist, an anti-Western tankie or a moron to not wish the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The 1979 revolution was anti-humanist, anti-reason and implemented a regime that - if it were led by fundamentalist Christians - would be called far-right and fascist. It's a theocracy, with law determined by its single interpretation of the one religion, with little tolerance for other religions let alone atheism.  It is a tightly controlled democracy, with choice between a preset selection of Islamist candidates.  There is little freedom of speech, nobody can campaign for the end of the Islamist regime. Media is entirely controlled by the state. Women are second class citizens, with the morality police controlling what they wear in public, because the men of the Islamic Republic can't be trusted to control their libidos, their hands and their penises if they see a women's head and hair.  Of course it's fairly obvious how difficult it is to be openly LGBT in the Islamic Republic. 

By any measure the entire Western self-styled "liberal" left would loathe and despise the regime. On top of its fascism, it has long had a nuclear programme which has been enriching uranium beyond that needed for civilian use. It is pursuing nuclear weapons, notwithstanding like north Korea before it, the claims it is not doing so.  Its economy is, in part, built on extracting fossil fuels.

However, the Islamic Republic does have several positive points - from the hard-left point of view - it has always called for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America", which reflect the deeply held feelings of anti-Zionists and anti-capitalists the world over.  To express this, Iran has funded, armed and trained its proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It has engaged in Iraq and Syria, although of course it was wrecklessly attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq with Soviet and US endorsement in 1980 and was undoubtedly the victim in that horrendous conflict.

Today, Iran has been a strong supporter and arms Russia, in support of its aggression against Ukraine. Iran mistakenly shot down Ukrainian flight PS752 in 2020, (but then the US mistakenly shot down Iran Air flight IR655 in 1988). 

The consequences of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is potentially catastrophic for Israel, but also may provide access to its proxies for such technology. Iran philosophically is antithetical to the values of open, tolerant secular liberal democracies.  

Israel's action against Iran, if it can end its nuclear programme, will help make the Middle East and the world a more peaceful place. If it can result in the fall of the regime, it will be all the better for the people of Iran and for promoting peace for Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and the Middle East more generally.  

Israel has done it before. In 1981 it destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, as Saddam Hussein's first attempt to develop a nuclear weapons' programme. This bought a great deal of time, and potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  At that time it was condemned by the UN Security Council, including the US, but it was morally entirely justified.

The only negative to Israel's action is if it fails, if it emboldens the regime further if it is not overthrown, and Iran's allies provide it with more support to develop WMDs. This is why it is important for the US to help it finish the job.

Those claiming moral equivalence between the liberal democratic open Israel, that is not a theocracy, that allows public protests, free press and does not seek "death" to any other countries, and the Islamic Republic of Iran are either morons or despicably evil.  The people of Iran deserve better than the calcified misogynistic theocracy in Tehran, and no such regime should feel free to develop nuclear weapons.

There is a pragmatic argument as to whether Israel's actions could prove counter-productive, but that is not an argument against disarming Iran. Those who protest or are openly in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran are actual far-right fascists, and should be called out for it.  As Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, Israel is doing the West's "dirty work for us". Let us hope it works.

And yes, to those who say whatever succeeds the Islamic Republic might be worse, there is always that risk.  One poll indicated that the vast majority want an end to the Islamic Republic, and although the previous regime was far from a liberal democratic one (the Shah was violent to opponents), it did provide a framework for women to be more equal citizens.  Bear in mind the protests that erupted in 2022 after the death in custody of a young woman arrested for wearing a hijab improperly.

To come back locally. I wonder if one, just one, journalist in NZ might ask any of the hard-left party leaders - Swarbrick, Davidson, Waititi or Ngarewa-Packer, whether they think it would be good if Iran's regime fell over or even....just even, if it would be good if Iran had nuclear weapons.

I doubt any journalists would have the courage to do so, or if any did, the answers would be at best evasive at worst a repulsive eructation of moral equivalency.  

If ever there is a display of values by politicians it is how they apply their own values to people abroad.