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EDITOR
Simon Minto: simon.g.minto@gmail.com
Tim Arbuckle
Neill Atkinson
Carl Billington
Len Cook
Claire Finlayson
Derek Gill
Grace Gollan
Kevin Jenkins
Simon Minto
Kathy Ombler
Adithi Pandit
Kirsten Rose
Jocelyn Rout
Liam Russell
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Peter Lorimer – the passing of a consummate public servant
Lead story
From colonial origins to Tiriti partner: A history of the public service It’s 110 years since the passing of the Public Service Act. Neill Atkinson surveys the good and the bad.
Investigation
Pay restraint – what it does and doesn’t mean for the public service What’s happening with pay in the public service? Carl Billington investigates this swirling issue.
Analysis
Protecting statutorily independent functions – a visible gap in our constitutional arrangements Independence is a central ingredient of democratic institutions. Len Cook explores its importance and asks whether it has been ignored in key statutes.
Fepulea‘i Margie Apa, Chief Executive, Te Whatu Ora | Health New Zealand Fepulea‘i Margie Apa heads the new health organisation Te Whatu Ora. Simon Minto talks to her about what she wants the organisation to focus on.
Special feature: Public sector heroes Determination, fashion, and humility Mary Soonaoso Tiumalu is the winner of the Spirit of Service Young Leader of the Year Award. Claire Finlayson chats to her about leadership and what she’d love to see happen in the public sector.
Eyes on the world
Navigating Indigenous relations across the ditch Kirsten Rose talks to Lil Anderson about what she takes away from her time working in Australia.
IPANZ New Professionals
Developing the next generation of public sector leaders Liam Russell explains what IPANZ New Professionals offers to public servants starting their careers.
Profile
Towards a new public service Guled Mire survived a civil war and is now a senior policy advisor. Kathy Ombler talks to him about his experiences and what he’d like to see happen in the New Zealand public service.
Keeping pace in space Kevin Jenkins explores the rapid development of the space industry and what it means for regulators.
Paula Tesoriero, Chief Executive, Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People
Paula Tesoriero is the first disabled person to head a New Zealand public service department. Kirsten Rose talks to her about her background and her vision for a New Zealand without barriers.
Analysis
Applying systems thinking: Observations from the field Adithi Pandit, Grace Gollan, and Tim Arbuckle explore the benefits of systems thinking.
Conversation
Dealing with porn in a digital age
Children are exposed to porn from a very young age. Jocelyn Rout talks with David Shanks about the challenge of regulating online pornography.
Public Sector is printed on environmentally responsible paper produced using ECF, third-party certified pulp from responsible sources and manufactured under the ISO14001 Environmental Management System.
A history of the public service
The funeral service for Peter Lorimer on 26 October 2022 was a celebration of a life dedicated to serving the public.
When he was awarded the ONZM in 2018, the citation commented: “Mr Lorimer has played a key role in developing legislation, such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 and the Public Finance Act 1989. He was instrumental in supporting the passage of the Public Finance Act by providing advice and information … His contributions have enabled the Act to remain up-to-date and effective through changing circumstances.”
Earlier this year, when he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Public Service Commission’s Spirit of Service Awards, the citation included the following:
“Peter is a career public servant who truly embodies the spirit of service. His service has been dedicated to strengthening the institutions of constitutional and democratic government and working for the benefit of all New Zealanders … His expertise is widely recognised and sought out within the Treasury, across the public service, and beyond. Peter demonstrates humility through the dedication of his time, and he lives the public service principles of political neutrality and free and frank advice every day. He has supported successive generations of officials to instil the intent of the financial management system … His intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, and desire to help others exemplify the ethos of the public service. He is a worthy recipient of the Spirit of Service Lifetime Achievement Award.”
While these citations are accurate, there was also a lot more to Peter.
He worked at the Treasury from 1968 to 1997 and again from 1998 until a few months ago, with eleven years at the Department of Labour in between. Peter never held a formal senior management role at Treasury, but he was always “Mr Public Finance Act”. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Act, its implementation, and the practical, real-world issues associated with managing the government’s finances.
He was an intriguing mix: in many ways, he was an old-school public servant who valued formality and referred to everyone as Mr or Ms, yet he was always available and always ready to provide advice, support, and guidance no matter the issue.
He was a man who valued privacy, but was widely known. He formed deep and lasting friendships with colleagues across the public sector.
Peter was also a colleague who gained enormous pleasure from sharing and being a person who could be turned to for support and advice. Whenever an issue became genuinely sticky, there would be Peter, calm, experienced, and offering sensible solutions and winwin outcomes.
Peter offered the same approach and the same service whether you were a brand-new graduate trying to work out how to address a problem or an experienced Cabinet Minister trying to solve a complex situation.
To use a metaphor from cricket, which Peter loved, he was a rock in the middle order. He anchored the team’s performance and gained the respect and confidence of everyone he worked with.
In short, Peter embodied the professional leadership that he inspired in others – as a colleague, coach, and mentor. He was a fount of institutional knowledge and experience, with a remarkable memory and an insatiable thirst for learning and knowledge.
It is a testament to Peter’s contribution that in addition to family, friends, and colleagues, the acting Prime Minister and another Cabinet Minister both attended his funeral. We all came together to acknowledge a life and to mourn Peter’s passing, as well as to say farewell to an outstanding servant of the New Zealand public.
Farewell my friend, colleague, and bridge partner.
Derek Gill, IPANZ Board Member
Kāore te kumara e kōrere mō tōna ake reka
The kumara does not speak of its own sweetness
to see possibilities rather than constraints, and a desire to make a difference. One of the pre-eminent legal minds of his generation, he always gave respect to whomever he was listening to – whether it was a new graduate or the prime minister.
He aha te kai a te rangitira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he korero.
The public service was established 110 years ago. Neill Atkinson, Chief Historian, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage, explores what’s been quite a ride.
What is the food of the leader? It is knowledge, it is communication.
The Public Service Act passed into law on 7 November 1912, establishing the foundations of the modern public service. Many of its key principles – professionalism, political neutrality, meritbased appointments – have endured, despite significant reform in the 1980s. The origins of Aotearoa New Zealand’s public service date back much further, though, to the beginnings of British colonisation in 1840.
On the auspicious date of 22/2/2022, IPANZ held its much-deferred annual conference as an online conference. Miraculously, our speakers, sponsors, and more importantly, our attendees stayed with us. My thanks to all those who attended. It was a great day, providing much food for thought, debate, and action.
On 21 September 2021, IPANZ will be holding its annual conference. The focus of the conference is on the key challenges facing the public service, both current and future. It is a conference designed to provide public service professionals with the opportunity to pause, listen, reflect, and learn together.
Early government officials, based in Auckland, reported to the colony’s governor until 1856, when responsibility shifted to Cabinet Ministers in the governments accountable to New Zealand’s recently established parliament.
From 1853 to 1876, there were also mini-bureaucracies supporting the colony’s provincial governments, but with the abolition of the provinces, Pākehā political power was heavily concentrated in Wellington, the capital from 1865.
confronted a global pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand. Not the first time we have joined forces with allies to confront a global threat. Not the first time we have sought answers to housing issues. Nor is it the first time we have confronted competing priorities regarding resources. As Justice Joe said: “We are not on a linear pathway to enlightenment.”
For me, perhaps the most thought-provoking concept was introduced by Justice Joe Williams in the keynote Ivan Kwok memorial lecture entitled “Crown–Māori Relations: A 200-year Search for Partnership”. Confronting yet constructive, devastatingly honest, yet hopeful and optimistic, Justice Joe challenged us to strive against our national failing of “amnesia” – where we forget and therefore do not learn from the possibilities of the past. An amnesia that leads us to believe that we are the first generation to have tried to find the solution to true partnership between Māori and the Crown – to forget that the potential for partnership has repeatedly emerged over the last 180 years.
The conference begins with an address in honour of an exemplary public servant, the inaugural Ivan Kwok Memorial Lecture, given by Justice Joe Williams. The focus of the lecture is on one of our greatest challenges and opportunities – realising a real partnership between Māori and the Crown.
The whakataukī “kāore te kumara e kōrere mō tōna ake reka –the kumara does not speak of its own sweetness” could have been composed for Ivan Kwok. He was a man of great humility, warmth, and kindness coupled with a sharp intellect, the ability
But is the impact of this amnesia limited to Crown–Māori relationships? I would argue no. This is not the first time we have
By 1870, a colonial government based on British traditions and overwhelmingly focused on the needs and aspirations of Pākehā settlers had asserted control over almost the entire country, forcing once-autonomous Māori communities to the margins. At that time, nine Cabinet Ministers oversaw a “civil service” (as it was then generally known) of 1,600 staff.
We are all familiar with the phrase “those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them”. If we fail to listen to the past, we can become blinded by our current assumptions and bias. We become vulnerable to re-inventing failed solutions or falling victim to “snake oil”. We have no idea where our choices will take us. This is all too depressingly true.
But it is in his relationship with iwi leaders, his work to further a true partnership between Māori and the Crown, that Ivan provides us with both challenge and hope. Here was a man who was not tangata whenua but who was respected across te ao Māori. Why? Because Ivan believed in listening deeply to understand, in the true power of conversation, in engaging early, in people over process. Ivan demonstrated that by sitting down together and understanding each other’s interest at a deep relational level, the Treaty partners could find new and different ways of working with each other – ways that benefited Māori and the nation as a whole. He aha te kai a te rangitira? He korero, he korero, he korero.
The civil service expanded in the 1870s, which was an era of massive state investment in infrastructure (especially railways), assisted immigration from Britain, and compulsory education. By the end of that decade, the service counted 11,000 staff, but numbers fell during the economically depressed 1880s. Further growth occurred from the 1890s, when the Liberal Government established twelve new departments and greatly expanded the state’s role in agriculture, industrial relations, old-age pensions, and other areas. Another innovation of the Liberal era was the establishment of contributory superannuation schemes for government employees.
However, the concept of “amnesia” gave me cause for hope and optimism. We have within ourselves – globally, nationally, locally, and within our communities – the concepts, stories, and ideas that can help us solve current and future challenges. We can recover these memories. Our hindsight can become our foresight. The challenge is to ensure that this “collective memory” is truly reflective of all our stories, of the diversity of our experience as a nation – that it is not partial or selective. This is a challenge that, judging from their session at the IPANZ conference, our new public servants, our rangatahi, are truly alive to, which gives me enormous optimism for the future.
Ivan’s tangi, which was held at Pipitea Marae, was attended by iwi leaders, past and present ministers of finance, and other dignitaries. Many spoke of Ivan’s “sweetness”, of the huge legacy of this humble public servant. It is my hope that the Ivan Kwok Memorial Lecture series will become part of this legacy – that the kōrero generated by these addresses will help sustain a new generation of public sector leaders as we take on the challenges of the future for the benefit of all.
Various reforms since the 1860s had attempted to standardise recruitment, promotion, and dismissals, but Ministers held a tight grip on their departments, running them largely as they saw fit. The Liberals’ opponents complained of widespread political patronage, even corruption. One legendary story recalls Premier Richard Seddon giving an old West Coast mining mate a
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On page 3 of the December 2021 journal, the introduction reads:
government job; when an official complained that the man could neither read nor write, Seddon replied: “Learn him!”
By 1912, there were 23,000 state employees, though most worked for two huge “trading departments”: Railways, and Post and Telegraph. The “core” service employed about 5,000 staff, with the five biggest departments being Public Works, Lands and Survey, Agriculture, Mental Hospitals, and the Government Printer. This was an overwhelmingly male, Pākehā service; a small number of women were employed, mostly in low-paid clerical roles, while a handful of Māori worked for the Native Affairs Department.
The Public Service Act 1912 largely reflected the recommendations of a Royal Commission established by the Liberal Government, but it was designed and implemented by a new Reform Party administration, which had just ended the Liberals’ twenty-one-year grip on power. The Act sought to establish a politically neutral, permanent public service, with merit-based appointments and promotion and a rules-based grading and remuneration system. Instead of being engaged by individual departments, public servants (except those in Railways and Police) were now employed by a central, independent Public Service Commission (PSC), accountable to parliament.
The first Public Service Commissioner, Donald Robertson, was appointed in 1913, heading a staff of eleven. That year also saw the formation of the Public Service Association (PSA), which would become increasingly influential as a voice for workers, especially from the 1940s.
The Reform Government championed efficiency and American ideas of “scientific management”, but remained committed to state intervention, expanding secondary education, electricity generation, and support for home ownership. The First World War demanded a dramatic expansion of the public service to manage the unprecedented military mobilisation, increased taxation,
censorship, war pensions, and soldiers’ rehabilitation assistance. Out of necessity, women entered the service in significant numbers for the first time, but their roles were strictly temporary – to be relinquished when the boys came home.
Economic difficulties in the early 1920s and especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s saw public service pay cuts and job losses. From 1935, though, the first Labour Government transformed the state’s role in social welfare, housing, employment, culture, and radio broadcasting, leading to significant growth in public service employment. The Second World War brought new responsibilities and challenges, staff shortages, and another upsurge in women’s employment. From the late 1940s, women were allowed to become permanent public servants – the longstanding rule that required them to resign when they married was removed, and (unpaid) maternity leave was introduced.
By 1955, women comprised 28 percent of the core public service, but their career pathways were restricted and they were paid far less than their male counterparts. Despite resistance from the PSC, a campaign by the PSA, other unions, and women’s groups led to the Government Service Equal Pay Act 1960, which sought to close the pay gap for female public servants, who made up a fifth of all working women. Broader equal pay legislation followed in 1972, though pay gaps persisted and the battle for equality was far from over. In 1962, a Royal Commission established by the National Government investigated the now fifty-year-old public service, which had grown to almost 40,000 permanent employees.
As a result, the PSC was succeeded by a new State Services Commission (SSC) with four commissioners and wider powers to ensure efficiency across the government sector.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, a time of economic uncertainty, the public service was increasingly criticised as inflexible and inefficient. Even so, this era was notable for innovations that would have far-reaching consequences, including the introduction of the first computers, the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal, and the passing of the Official Information Act 1982.
From 1984, the fourth Labour Government launched a radical overhaul of the public service, driven by a belief that free markets were preferable to state intervention. Trading departments were converted into state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and many were later privatised. The State Sector Act 1988 devolved responsibility for the employment of public servants from the SSC to departmental chief executives, reversing a key feature of the 1912 act. The Public Finance Act 1989 transformed departments’ funding, with a new emphasis on outputs and outcomes.
Many large departments were restructured, often into separate policy and delivery entities, and numerous functions were contracted out to private providers. With job security removed, restructuring and redundancies reduced public service staffing from 70,000 in 1986 to 36,000 by 1993. Reformers hailed the resulting efficiencies, but critics warned of fragmentation, diminished accountability, and the corroding impact of relentless change – risks that were highlighted by the 1995 Cave Creek tragedy.
At the same time, a different kind of revolution was under way, as the public service belatedly began to acknowledge its obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, taking tentative steps towards biculturalism and recognition of Māori culture and language.
In the twenty-first century, the public service has faced numerous challenges, including responding to the Canterbury earthquakes, the 2019 terrorist attacks, and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The most demanding, complex crisis since the Second World War, the pandemic had enormous implications for New Zealanders’ health, economic security, and social cohesion. It required an unprecedented all-of-government response in which public servants took on major new functions and powers. Public trust in their integrity and professionalism was essential to the success of this national effort. Responding to climate change will demand a similar sense of unity and purpose.
FROM 70,000 IN 1986 TO 36,000 BY
In 2020, a new Public Service Act signalled a shift away from the highly devolved – or siloed – system that had emerged since the 1980s. The new emphasis is on an agile, unified service that’s focused on outcomes, is responsive to diverse communities, and embraces the Māori–Crown relationship.
To a public servant from 1912, the modern service would barely be recognisable. Although many of its core functions, such as
administering legislation and providing services to the public, remain the same, the state’s responsibilities and priorities have radically changed. Many of the major functions of government today, in welfare, superannuation, taxation, foreign affairs, and the environment, hardly existed 110 years ago. Some of the most high-profile departments of the early twentieth century – Marine, Railways, Public Works, Mines – are long gone.
No longer recruited as fifteen-year-old cadets, public servants are much more likely to be university educated, to change jobs more often, and to move freely between the private and public sectors. Technology has revolutionised the way they work and communicate, and the COVID pandemic has accelerated trends towards flexible and remote working.
The government’s workforce is vastly more diverse than it was in 1912, with women now making up a sizeable majority of public servants. But they have only recently been well-represented in senior roles, and the struggle to achieve equality in all aspects of working life continues. The same is true for the increasing numbers of Māori public servants, those from Pacific and other ethnic communities, and those with disabilities.
The wero (challenge) to acknowledge historical injustices, embrace genuine partnership, and provide equal opportunities for all New Zealanders continues as the public service heads towards the bicentenary of Te Tiriti in 2040.
In May 2021, the government released its Workforce Policy Statement, setting out its expectations for pay and employment relations across the public sector.
This extended the 2020 guidance from Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission and set a clear expectation that “pay restraint will need to continue to be exercised ... for the next three years”. This was instantly labelled by media as a pay freeze.
Carl Billington speaks with Alex Chadwick, from Te Kawa Mataaho, and Kerry Davies, from the Public Service Association, about the original intent of the guidance, its implications, and what it actually achieved. He gets answers that challenge the media story.
Pay freeze or pay restraint: what’s the difference?
“This is absolutely not, and has never been, a pay freeze,” says Chadwick (Deputy Commissioner – Workforce, Employment, & Equity for Te Kawa Mataaho).
“One of the first aims was actually lifting the pay of our lowest earners – those who earn below $60,000. Then we were looking to adjust the pay of our middle earners – those earning between $60,000 and $100,000, and hold the pay of those earning over $100,000.
“We also had two other really important aims: honouring contractual commitments and continuing our work to close gender and ethnic pay gaps,” Chadwick adds.
“This was about balancing the need to manage wage growth in an environment of restraint, while still acknowledging the struggle many New Zealanders were, and are still, facing from the impacts of COVID-19.
“What we see from the data is that we have achieved all of those aims,” Chadwick adds.
This perspective isn’t what made the headlines, however, with the announcement and how it was reported surprising many across the sector,
including the Public Service Association (PSA).
“We were surprised by the government’s announcement. We’d been in the process of early talks with the Commission. We’d been talking about the unintended and unhelpful consequences that can flow from austerity approaches to pay,” adds Davies (National Secretary, Public Service Association).
“We reached out to PSA members, who flooded us with powerful statements about how this would affect them and their families and about the sense that the mighty effort they’d been making to support the government and the country through the pandemic was not being valued. We expected that public servants would be dealt with fairly and not be subject to unnecessarily strict pay restrictions.”
“We did not accept that the directive was a pay freeze,” says Davies. “Each public service employer must negotiate with us in good faith, and the pay restriction guidance could only be an employer’s starting bargaining position. We were also clear that this must not impact the resolution of claims we had filed under the Equal Pay Act or the negotiated work underway on closing gender and ethnic pay gaps.”
Chadwick adds, “In fairness to the media, it’s quite a complicated thing to communicate – it’s nuanced. It’s very difficult in a five-second bite to explain what this is. We also spent a lot of time working with public service chief
executives to ensure they understood what it was actually all about and what they needed to do.”
Despite this, the situation raised several specific concerns for the PSA. As Davies explains:
“We particularly wanted to avoid things that had happened when previous governments had restricted pay: depression of pay for the lowest and middle earners, as available funding was rationed for those hardest to recruit and the highest paid; widening of gender and ethnic pay gaps; and increased churn as people seek more income by moving jobs or going contracting.
“There is no equity in this.”
So what did it achieve?
In response to this question, Chadwick points to the recently released Workforce Data – Remuneration/Pay update, which showed the average wage across the public service increased 3.7 percent in the last year, compared with 7.1 percent for the private sector.
“Not only are we holding pay, the bulk of the increases have gone to our lowest paid and non-managerial staff. The average pay increase for managers was 1.6 percent in the last year, where for non-managers, it was 3.2 percent. The increases have occurred where they are most needed,” Chadwick adds.
WE PARTICULARLY WANTED TO AVOID THINGS THAT HAD HAPPENED WHEN PREVIOUS GOVERNMENTS HAD RESTRICTED PAY.
ITAlex Chadwick Kerry Davies
“This doesn’t mean those earning over $100,000 haven’t had increases, because they have, but it’s been a lot less than for our lower paid workers, and that’s been deliberate,” Chadwick adds.
“We’ve also continued to close gender and ethnic pay gaps, even during this period of pay restraint. While we still have more work to do, the gender pay gap now sits at 7.7 percent – the lowest it’s ever been (and down from 12.2 percent in 2018).
“Similarly, the gap for Māori is also the lowest it’s ever been at 6.5 percent. And, finally, chief executive pay has decreased by 4 percent on average over the last five years (to June 2021) – and that’s not including the 20 percent voluntary pay cut that CEs agreed to take in 2020,” adds Chadwick.
According to Chadwick then, the pay restraint guidance is delivering on its intentions around pay gaps. However, Davies points out that inflation and the increased living costs are impacting everyone, not just lowest earners. Also, restricting pay potentially creates a disincentive for people to remain in the public service just at the time when we need their skill and expertise the most.
“Pay increases have not kept pace and have fallen even further behind than in the private sector. Turnover has hit a historic high, and many agencies are finding it very hard to recruit, which further impacts on workloads and burnout risks,” says Davies.
“Of course, this flows on to our members’ families and communities.
“People who leave their job for a role with another employer are likely to have had up to four times the size of pay increase over the last four years compared with someone who has stayed in the role. It’s the only way to get a pay increase that’s more in line with increases in the cost of living.
“Now, with sustained inflation, pressure on the real value of people’s pay has intensified. I think that much of what we were concerned about has happened,” adds Davies.
Chadwick acknowledges the increase in turnover: “We’ve definitely seen an increase in turnover. It’s currently at 17.3 percent, which is high. However, this is an issue across the entire economy; it’s not unique to the public service. We have an incredibly tight labour market.”
When Te Kawa Mataaho conducted their inaugural Public Service Census in 2021, the results were telling.
“We definitely found people were becoming a bit more mobile. What our census revealed though was that those who were looking for a new role were doing so within the public sector. So although turnover is high, the data indicates we’re not losing talent from the public sector,” Chadwick explains.
“Nearly 40,000 public servants participated in the census. Eighty-four percent indicated they’re motivated to stay in the public service because their work contributes positively to society. The desire to serve New Zealanders and give back to their communities is incredibly powerful,” Chadwick adds.
On this, Davies agrees: “People’s commitment to public service remains strong, and most are ready to embrace the challenges and benefits of its next evolutions such as supporting the Crown in its Te Tiriti obligations and fostering more active citizenship.
“We hear often that people are ready for work to change. People want to feel valued; they want more control over their time and to be more trusted in how they manage it, with greater flexibility about when and where they work.
“The pandemic has brought into sharp relief the importance of family and how working conditions that enable people to support their families to thrive also support them to do a good job. It has also highlighted for many that health is not just physical and people want more attention
paid to ensuring mentally healthy work and seeing things like sick leave as not just for the body,” adds Davies.
“We’re confident that the outcomes of our equal pay claim for those in administration roles, and our work towards consistent approaches to pay and conditions across the public service, will support even more equitable and inclusive public service workplaces.”
As this discussion comes to a close, the government has confirmed it is entering negotiations with unions in response to a Council of Trade Unions’ proposal for a sector-wide, inflation-based pay adjustment.
Chadwick explains, “Government has asked public sector employers to enter into negotiations for a public sector pay adjustment, and bargaining with unions is now underway. A pay adjustment for some of the staff in the public sector might address some of the impact of inflation.
“These are many of our frontline workers who have really done it tough during COVID – bearing the brunt of the response. This is about valuing the skill, effort, and responsibility that goes into these roles and, where necessary, making corrections for that historical under-valuation,” Chadwick adds.
“Our role is to support agencies to deliver and to work through those claims for their staff.”
While strong progress has been made, particularly around pay gaps, all agree there are challenges ahead. It’s clear that the issue of pay will not be going away any time soon.
fundamental question. Are we doing enough to protect public officials when they undertake their statutory functions independently of the government of the day?
all New Zealanders have long had in these special roles. It is a reminder to us of the advantage we have of being able to know that trust is well protected.
Len Cook, former New Zealand Government Statistician, UK National Statistician, RegistrarGeneral of England and Wales, member of the New Zealand Remuneration Authority, and past president of IPANZ, explores the central importance of independence for public agencies. He sees some disturbing trends and possibilities that could undermine the public’s trust in state institutions.
Across the world, democracy is under threat from both the left and the right. New Zealand, with its relatively “thin democracy”, is very reliant on state institutions acting independently of the executive or the legislature in carrying out key statutory functions. The recent seemingly arcane debate about the delegation of power under the Data and Statistics Act 2022 raises a more
The Public Service Act 2020 enables the delegation of the full powers and authority of any chief executive, not only to within the public service but also to unspecified external bodies. Similar provisions exist in the Crown Entities Act. A slightly narrower delegation power was included in the State Sector Act 1988. This is the default setting in the Public Service Act and Crown Entities Act unless parliament explicitly legislates otherwise. 1The Government Statistician; the Commissioner of Inland Revenue; the Surveyor-General; the National Archivist; the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages; the Director of Public Health; the Comptroller of Customs; and the Secretary of the Treasury all have this in common. Some independently oversee the integrity of executive actions, yet unlike Crown entities, they are within the public service. These roles may also have independent law enforcement functions or are integral to our constitutional arrangements and can have international and inter-generational implications. It is vital that their decisions remain independent of outside pressures.
Impartiality, transparency, professional competence, scientific and technological capability, and international collaboration are at the core of institutional practices and behaviours in such roles. The trust of the public in these independent functions must not wax and wane in the same way that the political fortunes of Ministers and their policy agencies and service delivery departments often do. Recent events in the United States regarding the national archives and actions of electoral officials are in stark contrast to the high trust that
Safeguarding independence in
Statutorily independent roles, particularly those explicitly referred to earlier, have long benefited from advances in information technologies. In common across the democratic world, the above roles are critical and enduring elements of our societal infrastructure. As New Zealand moves closer to the creation of a de facto national population register through the integration of administrative records across government, these roles will extend their reach in service provision, surveillance, and enforcement, as well as in statistics. They are inevitably at the forefront of such moves and usually determine the ever-expanding potential for the wider integration of public services. It is vital that the means to protect independence and trust evolve as well on a state-sector-wide basis. One-by-one change that haphazardly involves the powers and authority of any of the above statutorily independent roles avoids the deeper scrutiny essential for the protection of trust. Revised privacy legislation is just one of many necessary responses as advances in information technology are exploited in the face of existing constitutional weaknesses. The public debate about insertion now of the relevant Public Service Act clauses on delegation in the Data and Statistics Act 2022 has drawn attention to these wider issues.
Without relevant safeguards for protecting independence, the political pressures occasionally experienced by official statisticians can result in extreme responses. As recently as 2021, the Fijian Statistician was removed from his job, while the former Chief Statistician of Greece is still being prosecuted for his earlier correction of erroneous statistics. The prevalence of such situations inspired the development and promotion in 1992 of the United Nations Principles for Official Statistics. These outline what is necessary for the independence and expertise needed for national, international, and inter-generational trust
IT IS VITAL THAT THEIR DECISIONS REMAIN INDEPENDENT OF OUTSIDE PRESSURES.
in countries’ official statistics. Countries have usually reflected these principles in their statistical legislation in ways that reflect their history, constitutional arrangements, and size. The principles validate their practices in demanding situations. Long-standing concerns of politicisation existed in the UK. In order to regain the confidence of the British public in official statistics, the UK government introduced in 2008 one of the most comprehensive and effective independent oversight regimes2 seen anywhere. This development is an ideal model that has general international relevance for bringing independent oversight to the operation of statutorily independent roles that are also subject to forms of ministerial direction, as those listed above.
5. Sources and methods for data collection are appropriately chosen … to be cost-efficient and to minimise the reporting burden for data providers.
6. Individual data … are to be kept strictly confidential and are to be used exclusively for statistical purposes.
7. Erroneous interpretation and misuse of statistics are to be immediately … addressed.
8. Standards for … statistics are to [be based on] sound professional criteria.
9. Coordination of international statistical programmes is essential.
10. Bilateral and multilateral cooperation in statistics contribute to the improvement of statistics.
The UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics is an exemplar of international protocols, codes, and conventions. These are the same principles that underpin the rules, conventions, and policies that national statistical offices need in order to give proper effect to their enabling legislation. They are also relevant to other statutorily independent roles. They include these ten principles:
1. High quality international statistics … are a fundamental element of global information systems.
2. [Statistics] production is to be impartial and strictly based on the highest professional standards.
3. The public has a right to be informed about the mandates for the statistical work of the organisations.
4. [Statistical methods must] meet professional scientific standards and … made transparent for the users.
The Government Statistician is not the only statutorily independent role where proper practice is set out explicitly in an international convention, standard, or code. Unrelenting adherence by those with expertise, experience, and resources shapes public expectations, compliance, and engagement at every level when giving practical effect to enabling legislation. Official statistics are just one example of where legislation is necessary but not sufficient for trust in key statutorily independent roles.
inserted in the Data and Statistics Act
I am not aware of any known application since 1988 of the powers in the Public Service Act to delegate chief executive roles outside the public service. After thirty-four years of obscurity, these powers were placed in the Data and Statistics Act 2022. Parliament decided that this obscure general authority in the Public Service Act obviated the need for further parliamentary consideration of the intent to affirm the unrestricted delegation of the full powers and authority of the role of Government Statistician. Despite the untested nature of the relevant clauses and their longstanding obscurity, the burden of proof for this change in delegation was presumed to have already been met. In such a recourse to the Public Service Act, the burden of proof should be on justifying why such a seemingly obsolete power to delegate justifies any current relevance.3
characteristics of independent roles
The long-established statutory roles in the New Zealand state sector exist for the protection of the public interest. This includes the impartial preservation of public rights and their protection and the pre-emption of the influence of vested interests and corruption in sensitive governance decisions. They ensure the proper specification or transfer of resources, identity, and obligations that are of great importance to citizens. The authority to ensure compliance with statutory obligations placed on citizens may come with the legal authority to independently regulate how obligations are to be applied. Within the state sector, the expectations that Ministers place on policy and service agencies can put them in conflict with the impartiality and transparency required of statutorily independent roles. In the case of Crown entities, there are some roles that function independently of the board as well.
In the case of the Surveyor-General, through the maintenance of strict impartiality and adherence to statutory criteria, the drawing of the initial electoral boundaries for the Electoral Representation Commission occurs after the population figures from the Census are prepared by the Government Statistician. The Surveyor-General is also responsible for ensuring the complete integrity of the survey system and the LandonLine digital data base. The Registrar-General has statutory authority for the integrity of the ownership and legal rights of its content. The ValuerGeneral has the statutory responsibility to maintain the integrity of the national
IT IS VITAL THAT THE MEANS TO PROTECT INDEPENDENCE AND TRUST EVOLVE AS WELL ON A STATESECTOR-WIDE BASIS.
JUST ONE
valuation database free from the pressures of vested interests and corrupt valuation practice.
The Public Service Act does not prevent the possibility that the full delegation of any chief executive role, including of any statutorily independent powers, might result in a de facto relationship where authority might be shared by every partner that holds statutorily independent delegations. It might have been expected that legislation would define the parameters for determining the practical feasibility of such an arrangement and provide tests for evaluating the certainty that potential partners exist who could meet the ongoing intensity of public and professional scrutiny. This would have to include the integrity and impartiality of their past and present practices.
The ranking of a role within the state sector is critical when tensions between the priorities of Ministers and their agencies challenge obligations of transparency and integrity of decisions about processes and practice. (Cullen, 4 page 53) notes “… the fundamental purpose of the National Archives is to preserve the record of government. That fundamental purpose is a constitutional, not an academic one. It is about the accountability of governments to the people, now and in the future. The archives are not subordinate to the needs of present-day historians, nor are they simply part of our ‘heritage’.”
The Public Service Act 2020 took the important steps of codifying in one place existing long-standing conventions such as political neutrality, free and frank advice, open government, and stewardship as legislative principles. This Act should help New Zealand avoid the experience of similar jurisdictions, which have seen the accidental or gradual erosion of these principles. Although the
statutorily independent roles above have long exemplified these goals, we may have missed the opportunity to buttress in statute the crucial role they play. This will apply to all statutorily independent functions as they face these same pressures.
a. Statutorily independent roles exist to deliver and protect key functions of government when public trust in the very nature of government can become of national concern. Absolute certainty of impartiality, transparency, and proper expertise is needed to meet the basic requirements for public trust in the key statutorily independent roles.
b. Information technology increases the opportunity for integrated processes across government and widens the reach of the roles above. Given the end result of such integration is in effect a population register that will be used across government, the haphazard management of the consequences for integrated approaches to such statutorily independent roles results in piecemeal responses.
c. We risk becoming more vulnerable to a loss of public trust in government if the unfettered delegation of longstanding key statutorily independent roles were to become the norm. The burden of proof should be on justifying why the delegation
power should apply in each case. The full delegation of a statutorily independent role should require explicit legislative approval, such as applies for statutory deputy chief executive roles. All advice on such change must be transparent. Parliament must remove the existing default setting general approval now in place in the Public Service Act and the Crown Entities Act.
d. Regulatory impact statements about statutorily independent roles could then evaluate the justification of this specific delegation in any particular domain. This could include the constitutional, international, and inter-generational consequences and impacts on conformity with international conventions, standards, and codes.
e. In the case of the Government Statistician, the core elements of the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics outlined above provide a clear-cut test of whether the full delegation of the powers and authority of the Government Statistician could be met in any specific case. The tests are sufficiently specific such that those few potentially eligible could have been stated in the Data and Statistics Act 2022. International protocols will be similarly of relevance in other domains.
I am grateful to Bill Robertson, Dianne Macaskill, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, and Robert Hughes for their thoughts as this paper was prepared. Particular thanks to Derek Gill from IPANZ for his contributions to the finalisation of this paper.
I am responsible for any inadequacies in its final form.
1 The Public Service Act explicitly precludes delegating certain powers of the Public Service Commissioner and the Solicitor-General. 2 Since 2008, the UK Statistical Authority seeks to serve the public good by overseeing the production, publication and use by government of official statistics, most of which are prepared independently by the National Statistician. 3 The responsible Minister has an oversight role on the exercise of delegations. 4 See: www.aranz.org.nz/assets/publicationpdfs/Archifacts/1d549e554b/Archifacts-1999-April.pdf
Fepulea‘i Margie Apa is the head of the new health organisation Te Whatu Ora | Health New Zealand. It employs around 80,000 staff, having merged twenty District Health Boards and a further seven shared service agencies into one organisation. Simon Minto chats to her about her background and asks where she wants the organisation to head.
You learn a lot about health from spending twenty-five or so years in the health sector, and you learn a lot more when you grow up in South Auckland during the 1970s and 1980s. Fepulea‘i Margie Apa is the new head of Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand, and she brings an amazing background to this role. Most of her time has been spent at the former Counties–Manukau DHB, as well as a short time at Capital Coast.
Her chiefly title, Fepulea‘i, is her father’s title and was given to her by her father’s family in 2014. The title is from her village on Savai‘i in Sāmoa. It’s awarded to those who serve and look after their family. Margie is now responsible for a much larger family.
New Zealand underwent huge economic changes in the 1970s and 1980s, and these changes had a drastic effect on Margie’s community in South Auckland. She saw the factories and freezing works closing down and witnessed the direct effect on families, particularly the young men in her community. “I saw the loss of face from unemployment and the resulting health issues. Alcohol became a problem. Several peers in my church died by suicide.” While she saw it happening around her, it wasn’t until later that she realised what contributed to these problems and what it all meant for people’s health. That experience formed many of her ideas around the health system.
“It strikes me that a universally available health care system is critical.” She sees people who are unable to work and support families because they have poor health. “Although people in South Auckland were happy people, we were also pretty unhealthy.” Many of these health problems are preventable “but it’s not a one size fits all”. The needs of South Auckland are different from other parts of the country.
It’s this understanding about the power of prevention that has got Margie excited about the future.
In her time, Margie has seen huge changes in health care. “It’s totally different now, and the big thing is prevention.” Breast and bowel screening programmes were unheard of twenty years ago. “Seventeen hundred cases of bowel cancer have been detected through the national screening programme. That’s amazing.”
ALTHOUGH PEOPLE IN SOUTH AUCKLAND WERE HAPPY PEOPLE, WE WERE ALSO PRETTY UNHEALTHY.
She’s seen the introduction of the Primary Options for Acute Care (POAC) service. This gives resources to primary health care providers like GPs and health clinics so they can have tools like MRI scanning in the community. “So much can be done in
the community, but this needs to be expanded. It isn’t done consistently around the country.” These changes mean that fewer people with health care issues should have to go on waiting lists or go to hospital. “Hospital is not a bad place, but too many people are going there.” It is often a sign that they haven’t received the health care they should have had earlier.
Margie sees the whole area of prevention as having the most opportunities for people and is the thing she gets most excited about. “We have the science; we have the technology. It’s about how we choose to apply it.” It’s all around getting services into the communities so they can provide the services those communities need the most. This is the thing that can save and extend lives. She believes there are too many geographical boundaries to health care. People in rural or marginal communities have different needs from others but have different levels of service.
Margie sees the establishment of Te Aka Whai Ora as the most amazing innovation. Both Te Aka Whai Ora and Te Whatu Ora are agents of the Crown and have the job of improving health outcomes for Māori. This provides a chance to work for Māori at all levels. “We need to be joined at the head, heart, hips, hands, and feet.”
It’s often a problem with agencies that they develop an idea or a programme and then they consult with Māori. The people feel these programmes are often imposed. “We have to let go and share. Māori know what’s best for them, so we have to create space.”
What comes with this understanding is a recognition that health services have not always been accessible to Māori and Māori have often not had positive experiences of the health system. This negative experience has been passed down through the generations. A kaumātua may be snapped at by a health worker. That experience is passed through the community so there’s a deep suspicion of the health system and who it really serves. “We are wise to the fact that Māori come into a health organisation with a history, and we must make the organisation more acceptable to Māori.”
Another aspect to this is that the health system has a mostly nonMāori workforce. This can create a barrier to people coming in and reaching out for help. It’s about creating spaces for Māori to engage more with health services and feel they can access health care when they need it. “The challenge is huge, but we know what we need to do.”
One thing COVID taught us is that the health system can achieve major things and can make major shifts. “Who would imagine that we would get devices into people’s hands so they could test their own oxygen levels?” The experience has been hugely empowering. Regulations were changed quickly and had immediate benefits. Vaccinations could be given in communities by kaiāwhina under supervision. It allowed different models of care to operate. “But we are now at risk of slipping back to the old ways of care. We need to go forward. But what it shows is that the health system can adapt and it can move when it wants to.”
For Margie, the response to COVID is a sign of what’s possible. “When we’re focused, just see what can be achieved.” And this sense of achievement is what’s most satisfying about working in the health sector. It’s having a genuine effect on people’s lives in the most fundamental way. “But we can always do more. There’s lots we can do to prevent the slow diseases, like diabetes and cancer. These are all preventable. Working in the health sector is about saving lives and extending lives, and that’s what gets me excited.”
Favourite book
He Tipua: The Life and Times of Sir Apirana Ngata by Ranginui Walker
“My leadership textbook. The copy I have I stole from my best friend. A biography of an Indigenous leader by another Indigenous person.”
Favourite film
The Lost Boys (1987)
“A funky sort of movie. Something about it touched me, and I’ve watched it over and over again. So my children hate it now.”
A dog called Henry
“The light of my life. The only thing that adores me unconditionally.”
Favourite sport
Rugby
“I played club rugby for Pōneke when I was in Wellington. I absolutely loved the Women’s Rugby World Cup.”
A critical part of the innovation of Te Aka Whai Ora is that it partners with iwi so that health services and programmes are designed, implemented, and evaluated in partnership. Iwi have decisionmaking powers and mana motuhake in line with the partnership model outlined in Te Tiriti.
“I don’t really have a favourite travel destination, but as Chair of World Vision New Zealand, I’m really looking forward to going to Ghana. The challenges there are on a different scale, but the people’s resilience is inspiring.”
PEOPLE IN RURAL OR MARGINAL COMMUNITIES HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS FROM OTHERS BUT HAVE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SERVICE.
like this make my head spin. If I had my way, I’d never put myself up for them but the people around encouraged me to do it. Representation matters.”
Mary’s been described as a selfless leader whose spirit of service is underpinned by the Samoan values of Alofa (compassion for others), Fa‘aaloalo (building trust and respect), and Tauata‘i (exemplary leadership). Hers is a bottom-up management style: “I definitely like to be the type that galvanises others. I’ve always been someone who just wants to be in the background and push others to realise their potential.”
The 2022 Young Leader of the Year award at the Spirit of Service Awards went to Mary Soonaoso Tiumalu. Claire Finlayson chats with her about the kind of leader she is and the things that challenge and excite her.
Talking about her own shiny achievements makes Mary Soonaoso Tiumalu squirm. But that’s likely to be one of the reasons she was crowned Young Leader of the Year at the 2022 Spirit of Service Awards. It takes a certain kind of person to balance leading and serving with such poise – which is to say, she’s both driven and humble.
She looks set to become a bit of a serial award winner because she also scooped the Prime Minister’s Pacific Youth Awards in 2013 at the age of twenty-three. Back then, she said that one of the biggest challenges was convincing herself that she could be a leader and influence change. Nearly a decade on, as Manager of Language Strategy and Development at the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, she’s perfectly placed to influence big, culture-championing change across Aotearoa. So, is this Young Leader of the Year now convinced about her leadership skills?
“Just a tad. I think everyone has a little bit of self-doubt within them – it’s a mental exercise that you have to keep going through. I don’t ever think that I’m going to be the best – there’s always going to be that little bit of challenge that I have within. Awards
She’s all about creating a more holistic workplace culture. “In the setting I grew up in, there’s a concept called a ‘va’ – a space between you and others. It’s all about being mindful of the other person’s experience (their role in the community, their role in your family). That dictates how you approach what they need. I try and emulate that in my team. I have a wonderful group of mamas who have children, so I need to ensure that they can excel in the workplace but still meet their responsibilities as mothers. It really draws out the best in them. They can bring their children to meetings – sometimes we have kids there singing with us or listening to a talk about a Cabinet paper. I think we need to do this more often in the public sector. It should be a reflection and representation of society.”
On that note, Mary also reflects Pacific society in the workplace by shunning business attire in favour of Pacific-wear. This partly owes to the fact that she started a fashion label called FOU with her sister and a friend in 2018. “Fashion has always been a creative outlet for me. FOU celebrates all body shapes and empowers people to feel confident to embrace colour and unique Pacific patterns.” But Mary’s workplace fashion choices are also a bid to disrupt the status quo. “My wardrobe is pretty much 90 percent Pacific/Samoan and 10 percent basic. Even if it’s a pair of earrings or some flare pants with Pacific patterns, I try my best to reflect who I am in what I wear. I notice a lot more women in the sector
ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES WAS CONVINCING HERSELF THAT SHE COULD BE A LEADER AND INFLUENCE CHANGE.
being comfortable to embrace a bright orange Pacific-inspired blazer or a Mena dress. It’s pretty impactful to see.”
At the Ministry, Mary recently led a team that produced the firstever Pacific Languages Strategy, a landmark policy that seeks to reverse the decline of Pacific language use over the coming decade. “We know that the Pacific population in Aotearoa is growing super-fast. The strategy gives Pacific communities recognition that we value their place, their language, and their identity as contributing to the multiculturalism of Aotearoa.”
like yep, go and do it, as long as you’re happy and you’re doing it with your whole heart.”
She didn’t go dancing. She studied law and arts at the University of Auckland. After that she used the money from her Pacific Youth Award to book a trip to Fiji and Sāmoa to do some soul searching. It was while doing policy work in Fiji for humanitarian organisation Save the Children that she had her career epiphany. “It gave me that line of sight in terms of what I wanted to do. I realised I wanted to engage with people and understand what their aspirations were and then figure out how the system can respond effectively to that. So I came back to New Zealand, got a job at the Ministry for Pacific Peoples in 2016, and I haven’t looked back.”
It was an intensely personal bit of policy making: “I get quite emotional about it because the work has been in existence since before I was born. Communities migrated here and started language nests through their church environments. Language was core to their identity and wellbeing. So we had to make sure we were really honouring all of that advocacy from many years ago.”
The decline of Pacific language use across Aotearoa is a huge issue for New Zealand-born Pacific youth. One of the most sobering statistics quoted in the strategy puts the average proportion of under-fifteen-year-olds who speak their heritage language across all Pacific groups at a concerningly low 16 percent. As a New Zealand-born Samoan, Mary feels this statistic acutely.
“I consider myself very lucky because I grew up in an environment where there were no restrictions – either to speak English or Samoan. We could speak whatever we wanted.” So permissive and varied was the language diet in the Tiumalu household that Mary’s own tongue often betrays that rich linguistic mix – much to the amusement of her friends: “I sometimes get mocked because the way I speak Samoan can sound like Swahili.”
She’d love for all Pacific youth to have ready access to their heritage languages. “There’s a concern that the environment they’re growing up in is predominantly English – or that’s the message that’s been pushed onto them: that you need English to succeed. It motivates me to figure out what methods we need to support all communities and age cohorts to know their languages.”
Much of Mary’s professional drive comes from her upbringing. She says, “My mum came to Auckland from Sāmoa when she was just thirteen, and my dad came when he was a bit older. They migrated with that 1960s–1970s cohort. They wanted us to have the opportunities they didn’t have and really pushed us in education, but they didn’t restrict us in terms of what we wanted to do. If I’d wanted to go and dance with Parris Goebel, they would’ve been
Being a conduit between Pacific communities and government makes Mary’s role a deeply personal one. So, does she need to park any idealism at the Ministry door? “You can’t write policy on emotions, so that’s what I try and park at the door, but you can invite values into the policy space.” One person who inspires Mary in this regard is Aiono Matthew Aileone, the Ministry’s Deputy Secretary for Policy, Research and Evaluation, Languages and Housing. “He walks both worlds really well – he’s really strong in his identity as a Samoan, but also as a public servant. That’s the kind of leader I try to be every day: strong in who I am but also aware of what levers to pull and what relationships I need to build in order to get good outcomes for Pacific communities.”
She says relationship building is crucial to her work: “I honestly think it just comes down to ‘talanoa’ – to having conversations with people and breaking down the misunderstandings that exist between a policy advisor and a community person. With policy, you can only do things once you really understand what the community’s experience is.”
When Mary’s parents first heard that her day job was to involve helping Pacific communities progress, they gave her this advice: “You might be in situations where you’re the only Pacific person but just speak with conviction and affirmation in order to really advocate for our communities. You’re working for the Ministry – do not take this job lightly.”
They needn’t have worried about her advocacy skills. Being the youngest of four kids, she’d been perfecting those for some time. “My siblings would attest that I had a bit of a mouth on me growing up. There’s a saying in Samoan – ‘E la‘ititi ae maini’, which means you may be the smallest or youngest, but you have a lot of grit and determination to get something done. I thank my siblings for giving me the tools to be able to tackle anything that comes my way!”
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN SOMEONE WHO JUST WANTS TO BE IN THE BACKGROUND AND PUSH OTHERS TO REALISE THEIR POTENTIAL.
Lil Anderson has been in Australia since April. Kirsten Rose catches up with her and asks her about her impressions of the Australian public service and other things Australian.
Lil Anderson (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is the Tumu Whakarae (Chief Executive) of Te Arawhiti | the Office for Māori Crown Relations. Over the past twenty-five years, Lil has worked tirelessly in the public sector, spearheading change in Māori relations, negotiating Tiriti settlements, and supporting vulnerable communities. In April 2022, Lil started a twelve-month secondment at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) in Australia, as a leadership and teaching fellow.
On the morning I caught up with Lil, she had been at her Gold Coast desk since 5.00 a.m. with her “Te Arawhiti hat on”, meeting with New Zealand ministers to discuss Māori Crown relations.
Navigating different time zones and obligations between her Te Arawhiti and ANZOG work is a wero (challenge) that she is relishing; thanks in part to coffee, but mainly to the joy of being able to watch her mokopuna grow up nearby and the chance to help local Indigenous communities and Australia’s public service.
“The secondment has provided a great opportunity personally and professionally. I was at the point of my career where I felt like I needed some perspective, particularly post-COVID. What I do is really big and it’s important and complex. This post is giving me the opportunity to contribute something to the Australian journey. I think they’re probably where we were eight years ago. The role sees me working three days a week for ANZSOG and then two days with the New Zealand government.”
A big part of her secondment has been facilitating visits and meetings – between Te Arawhiti Minister Kelvin Davis and Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Andrew Little with their Australian state and federal government counterparts, Aboriginal groups, and Māori residing in the Gold Coast.
“It took a while to make the right contacts. I already had a few here, but I now feel like I’ve got relationships across the breadth of the Australian public service, for sure. The work here has been really interesting. Prime Minister [Anthony] Albanese has brought a really sharp focus to Indigenous issues here, particularly around the Uluru Statement from the Heart. That’s given a huge impetus to government and to the public service to really lift their game in the way that they work with Indigenous issues.
“I teach and work with executive teams and other public service teams trying to understand their journey, trying to give
them some really practical help. I’m not really a forty-page strategy person (which they seem to really like here). I’m more, ‘why don’t you try this?’, ‘why don’t you try that?’, ‘we’ve had some success with this type of thing’. The hunger and the passion for that [practical] work here is really insatiable at the moment. The other part of my work here is working with the Australian Public Service Commission and other key agencies to look at how you grow capacity, which is a different issue to capability.”
“The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands public servants is quite low here, particularly in high-level executive positions. There really is a desire here to see that [change]. They have got strategies and pathways, but something is missing. Trying to help them put their finger on that has been really the most exciting piece of work that I’m doing here.
“Change doesn’t come without challenge. Sometimes it’s easier to have an outside perspective, and I’m finding the Australians are really valuing my views and
observations. Certainly, it’s not like they haven’t been trying, it’s just some of the measures haven’t quite landed fast enough. This is a government, here in Australia, that wants things to move relatively fast. Some states are starting on the Path to Treaty, which is their Treaty settlement process equivalent. They’re also looking at Voice to Parliament, which would be a constitutional voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. That’s a step further than obviously we have [taken] in Aotearoa. They’ve also got a number of really big partnership community initiatives with Indigenous communities, which part of me wants to bring back home, in exchange for the knowledge that I’m sharing about our experience.”
There are distinct differences between the two countries – notably volume (there are 2.1 million public servants in Australia compared with New Zealand’s 60,000) and the way each government works – but Lil has found refreshing similarities.
“Every public servant I’ve met is really passionate about serving their people. They are here to make a difference, much like the public service in New Zealand. There is the same real passion for what we do,” she says.
“I suppose the two things I’ve noticed that are most different is the hierarchy and the level of political involvement.
In New Zealand, we tend to be very politically neutral and that’s, I think, a real credit to us as public servants. In Australia, they express really strong political views all the time, which really had me taken aback.”
Australia’s disparate approach to dealing with its fraught colonial and Indigenous history has
provided another layer of complexity for Lil to negotiate in her Indigenous relations work at ANZSOG.
“This country has 60,000 years of history with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island races here. I’ve tried to meet with as many Indigenous public servants and community people as I can. Compared with the greater population, they’re only a small part, and they feel it’s really difficult to have a voice. But I think the moves that are being made across Australia to address that are really important.”
Lil reports some states are well into the journey of trying to negotiate treaties, while others are going straight to partnership agreements. Others are yet to start the process.
“Here in Queensland, for instance, there’s a programme called Thriving Communities, which is all about community governance and Indigenous governance in their community across social issues. That sort of partnership approach has been really successful for them, but that started well before the addressing of historical grievances and Path to Treaty. In New Zealand, we’ve had a very linear approach to it. We’ve looked at addressing grievance first as an enabler to being able to start fresh and look at partnership as a real possibility, whereas I think Australia has been able to look at partnerships earlier and then come to the treaty elements at a later point. In my opinion, you can’t really have a partnership when one of your partners is feeling aggrieved.
“It’s a really different landscape to New Zealand. There’s just so much complexity. First Nations language is hugely challenging. In Aotearoa, we have different dialects but our [Māori] language is the same. Here there are around 250 Aboriginal languages, and people are very protective.
I had to be very careful when I took the ministers to visit Logan (Queensland), where there are a number of different mobs (tribes). We had to be mindful to greet every single group. There are public servants and academics who are really doing their best to change the narrative and to move forward, but it’s a really big struggle, even within their own culture, as to which way is best.”
Talk of moves from a commonwealth to a republic across both countries
has prompted interesting conversations within the public sector. Lil believes any potential change would have a much greater impact in New Zealand than it would in Australia.
“One thing Māori all agree on is that the Treaty partnership is fundamental to everything. If one of those parties disappears, it changes fundamentally. Moving to a republic would change Treaty settlements, it would change the nature of governance in New Zealand, it would make sovereignty look different. Who then would be the partner to Māori in New Zealand? I’m not saying better or worse. I just think it opens up a completely different world.
“I was with a group of Aboriginal people here, and they said it wouldn’t really change anything for them. They don’t talk about the Crown at all. They talk about state government and federal government and local government. No one really thought, apart from the politicians, about the impact of the Queen’s death and what that might mean [for Aboriginal relations].”
Now in the final stages of her secondment, Lil says she has gained a new perspective on the public sector.
“I’m trying to help the community work their way around challenges. It feels like we’ve been there in New Zealand. I’m not saying we’re out the other side because we’re still going through it, but it feels like these communities are in some of the places we’ve already been. So, it’s been really great to reflect, actually, on what an amazing journey New Zealand’s had. It feels slow to me when I’m in New Zealand and I feel very impatient that the public service needs to get better and faster. But being here, I’ve been able to reflect, and we’ve made a lot of movement in five, six years.”
THEY DON’T TALK ABOUT THE CROWN AT ALL. THEY TALK ABOUT STATE GOVERNMENT AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
• parliament’s financial cycle
• scrutiny and integrity.
Our leadership rōpū is comprised of eighteen new professionals from a broad range of organisations, who volunteer their time to plan events and programmes:
• Sophie Austin, (Co-Chair) Senior Advisor – Stats NZ
• Anna Apperley, Consultant – Allen + Clarke
• Renee Burt, Senior Consultant – MartinJenkins
• Kate Butler, Solicitor – Russell McVeagh
• Ana Callaghan, (Co-Chair) Senior Advisor – DIA
• Georgia Doyle, Technology Consultant – Deloitte
• George Higgie, Consultant – Deloitte
• Steph James, Senior Consultant – Allen + Clarke
• Chikita Kodikal, Graduate Services Advisor – Ministry for Ethnic Communities
• Liam Russell (Treasurer), Senior Advisor – The Office of the Chief Justice
• Iain Sutherland, Compliance Advisor – Commerce Commission
• Mikayla Thompson, Junior Policy Advisor – Employers & Manufacturers Association.
Our team also includes a Tāmaki Makaurau sub-rōpū (who plan events and programmes for Auckland-based kaimahi) and a Public Sector journal sub-group.
If you would like to join the leadership team, discuss an idea for an event or programme, or have a chat about anything else, contact any member of the team or email IPANZNPLT@gmail.com.
Most government organisations are IPANZ members – if your organisation is a member, you can come to events for free and sign up for training at a discounted rate.
For more information:
• Check out our website: www.ipanz.org.nz/newprofessionals
• Ariane La Porte, Consultant – Allen + Clarke
• Georgina Lomax-Sawyers, Solicitor – Russell McVeagh
• Nadia McGeachen, Project Accountant – Kāinga Ora
• Martina Moroney, Policy Advisor – Infrastructure NZ
an online study group for those who are IPANZ’s Public Sector 101 course. These sessions, offered at a discounted price for Professionals members, provide a comprehensive the public sector in just 10 ½ hours over Topics covered include: Waitangi legislation and the constitution; agencies; officials and the policy process; financial cycle and integrity.
• Zaira Najam, Research & Data Analyst – MBIE
• Cullum Peni-Wesche, Senior Advisor – FENZ
offer an online study group for those who are IPANZ’s Public Sector 101 course. These study sessions, offered at a discounted price for Professionals members, provide a comprehensive to the public sector in just 10 ½ hours over sessions. Topics covered include: o Waitangi; parliament, legislation and the constitution; sector agencies; ministers, officials and the policy process; parliament's financial cycle; and and integrity.
offer an online study group for those who are IPANZ’s Public Sector 101 course. These study sessions, offered at a discounted price for Professionals members, provide a comprehensive to the public sector in just 10 ½ hours over sessions. Topics covered include: o Waitangi; parliament, legislation and the constitution; sector agencies; ministers, officials and the policy process; parliament's financial cycle; and and integrity.
If you would like to join the leadership team, discuss an idea for an event/programme, or have a chat about anything else, you can reach out to any member of the team or email IPANZNPLT@gmail.com
If you would like to join the leadership team, discuss an idea for an event/programme, or have a chat about anything else, you can reach out to any member of the team or email IPANZNPLT@gmail.com.
• Sign up for our mailing list and enrol as a member on the IPANZ website: www.ipanz.org.nz
• Follow us on LinkedIn: search “IPANZ New Professionals”
• email us: IPANZNPLT@gmail.com.
If you would like to join the leadership team, discuss an idea for an event/programme or have a chat about anything else, you can reach out to any member of the team or email IPANZNPLT@gmail.com.
The views and opinions shared in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the authors’ employers or any other organisation, group, or individual.
Thompson Junior Policy Advisor at the Employers & Manufacturers Associationinformative and provide amazing networking opportunities. It is great to be able to connect with people also starting out their career in the public sector a supportive network.
Joining IPANZ New Professionals was one of the most valuable steps in my career. The events are extremely informative and provide amazing networking opportunities. It is great to be able to connect with people who are also starting out their careers in the public sector and build a supportive network.
If you would like to join the leadership team, discuss an idea for an event/programme, or have a chat about anything else you can reach out to any member of the team or email IPANZNPLT@gmail.com.
so it’s been really valuable to make those connections.
so it’s been really valuable to make those connections.
Being a part of the Tāmaki Makaurau sub-rōpū has been a great way to meet like-minded professionals and learn about the full breadth of work going on across the sector. You can often feel far from the centre of the public sector up here in Auckland, so it’s been really valuable to make those connections.
If I was to give advice to a new graduate, it would be to throw yourself into as many opportunities as possible. This has provided me with the most personal and professional growth and increased my confidence in this space.
so it’s been really valuable to make those connections.
to give advice to a new graduate it would be to yourself into as many opportunities as possible. This provided me with the most personal and professional and increased my confidence in this space.”
Our first event, Modern Slavery: Government, Business & Worker Perspectives, gave me an opportunity to hear the perspectives of subject matter experts from right across the broad sector working to combat the issue. I also got to network with peers, make new connections and solidify my relationships with my fellow committee members.”
Our first event, Modern Slavery: Government, Business & Worker Perspectives, gave me an opportunity to hear the perspectives of subject matter experts from right across the broad sector working to combat the issue. I also got to network with peers, make new connections and solidify my relationships with my fellow committee members.”
Our first event, Modern Slavery: Government, Business & Worker Perspectives, gave me an opportunity to hear the perspectives of subject matter experts from right across the broad sector working to combat the issue. I also got to network with peers, make new connections and solidify my relationships with my fellow committee members.”
Our first event, on modern slavery, gave me an opportunity to hear the perspectives of subject-matter experts from right across the broad sector working to combat the problem. I also got to network with peers, make new connections, and solidify my relationships with my fellow committee members.
Iain Sutherland Compliance Advisor at the Commerce Commission | Te Komihana Tauhokohoko
other’s innovations and missteps. Through this have found that the Public Service truly values minds that thrive when given the chance to solve problems.
other’s innovations and missteps. Through this have found that the Public Service truly values minds that thrive when given the chance to solve problems.
I first discovered IPANZ because I was looking to challenge myself to take on different public service perspectives. Through the New Professionals group, I continually meet people who inspire me to adopt a sector mindset. For me, this means understanding we all work together towards the same goal of making everyone in Aotearoa better off. As a result, we can learn so much from each other’s innovations and missteps. Through this kōrero, I have found that the public service truly values inquiring minds that thrive when given the chance to solve complex problems.
offer an online study group for those who are completing IPANZ Public Sector 101 course. These study sessions, offered at a discounted price for Professionals , provide a comprehensive tion to the public sector in just 10 ½ hours over sessions. Topics covered include: Tiriti o Waitangi parliament, legislation and the constitution; sector agencies; ministers, officials and the policy process; parliament's financial cycle; and scrutiny and integrity. other’s innovations and missteps. Through this have found that the Public Service truly values minds that thrive when given the chance to solve problems.
so it’s been really valuable to make those connections. Our first event, Modern Slavery: Government, Business & Worker Perspectives, gave me an opportunity to hear the perspectives of subject matter experts from right across the broad sector working to combat the issue. I also got to network with peers, make new connections and solidify my relationships with my fellow committee members.”
innovations and missteps. Through this found that the Public Service truly values that thrive when given the chance to solve problems.
Professionals events you will hear the sector voice articulated alongside practical advice to help your tūrangawaewae in the Public Service. Now, years into my career, I can say I never run short opportunities to learn and help change the lives of people.” team
Professionals events you will hear the sector voice articulated alongside practical advice to help your tūrangawaewae in the Public Service. Now, years into my career, I can say I never run short opportunities to learn and help change the lives of people.” team
Professionals events you will hear the sector voice articulated alongside practical advice to help tūrangawaewae in the Public Service. Now, into my career, I can say I never run short to learn and help change the lives of
advice and professional development our events and programmes offer new professionals the chance to receive advice and ask from senior leaders and experienced public the Chiefs’ series is one of our flagship events. quarterly, these breakfast seminars provide are an opportunity to hear first hand from ‘chiefs’ as they reflect highlights and challenges they have faced during careers and offer insights and advice to those who starting out in the public sector These seminars
At New Professionals events, you will hear the sector voice passionately articulated alongside practical advice to help you find your tūrangawaewae in the public service. Now, nearly four years into my career, I can say I never run short of opportunities to learn and help change the lives of everyday people.
Today, the private and public sectors are increasingly intertwined. The importance of strengthening the private–public connection – not only at the senior leadership level but right from the start of the career journey – is paramount. IPANZ New Professionals provides an invaluable resource for those private sector new professionals who interface with the public sector (and vice versa) to develop a better understanding of the machinery of government and the private–public interface.
private public interface.”
private public interface.”
It’s hard to even imagine the first six years of Guled Mire’s life. His father was killed in the Somali civil war. When he was two, his family, eight siblings and his mum, fled Somalia. Four years later, they landed in Hamilton, along with a contingent of fellow African refugees who he realised stood out in a city that was not used to such cultural and colourful diversity.
He couldn’t speak English but settled happily into primary school. It was at secondary school where the wheels fell off. “Because of my refugee background, I felt like assumptions were often made by my teachers about my ability. I wanted to go to university, but I was discouraged, again and again, and told I wasn’t clever enough and to consider the trades. It really impacted on my confidence.”
Instead he travelled and returned with new perspectives and a determination to tackle university anyway. He graduated, majoring in international studies, criminology, and public policy.
Since then, he has completed a Master of Public Administration on a Fulbright Scholarship at Cornell University, spoken
for New Zealand at the United Nations, and chaired conversations with the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner for Refugees. Since the Christchurch mosque attacks, he has become a well-known human rights advocate. In 2022, he was awarded a Kea World Class New Zealand Award for his contributions to public policy and human rights.
He is now a senior policy advisor at MBIE, supporting the development of highgrowth startup businesses. In his spare time, he rallies against discrimination, is a community leader for ethnic minorities, and drives a mental health programme to support youth with migrant backgrounds.
It’s fair to say that Guled Mire has achieved beyond his teachers’ expectations. He now wears many hats, but how does he manage his own? And does a person with such a diverse background actually fit into the New Zealand public service?
After university, Guled joined the (then) Office of Ethnic Communities as a policy analyst.
“It was challenging to work in an area so close to my own experiences but at the same time be neutral and objective. That made me question what political neutrality is considering how the public service is grounded in Pākehā, colonial, and white worldviews that are often blind to the existence of others?”
He decided on a different approach. “I decided to work in policy areas completely removed from my lived experience. Thus I could still exercise my rights and duties as a private citizen to advocate for my communities outside my work, and at the same time, I could give back as a public servant through a career in policy.”
That choice has led him on a varied path – first working on local government policy with the Department of Internal Affairs and then health and safety policy and employment relations policy with MBIE. A secondment with the Public Service Commission included work on public service leadership.
“This was all really important work, and I felt motivated to give back and make a difference, which is something that I think motivates all public servants.”
In his current role as a senior policy advisor with MBIE, he leads a programme to support the Startup Advisors Council, established this year to address challenges and opportunities facing high-growth startup business.
I
FELT MOTIVATED TO GIVE BACK AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE, WHICH IS SOMETHING THAT I THINK MOTIVATES ALL PUBLIC SERVANTS.
“I’m loving it. I’m working with people who are innovative, hi-tech, entrepreneurial, and leaders in their space. It’s really exciting work.”
Towards a more inclusive public service
Guled says this work typifies what he loves about the public service. “There are so many different avenues available in terms of career paths and journeys. However, this is not to say that I’ll never find myself back in a public service role that is connected to my own experiences, because I actually believe the public service is starting to change and be more inclusive.”
But having a more inclusive and representative public service isn’t going to happen overnight. “How do we remove barriers and attract, retain, and develop diverse talent into all levels of the public service – including senior leadership?”
He says that seeing is believing. “A public service reflective of New Zealand and its communities will definitely encourage the next generation to take up more roles and opportunities.”
Outside work, Guled is busy leading human rights programmes to support ethnic and minority communities and to champion a more inclusive New Zealand. Guled’s own experiences as a young migrant inspired him to co-establish the charity Third Culture Minds.
“We look at the experiences and the mental health of young people with refugee and migrant backgrounds and provide them with the tools and resources they need to be able to navigate in this society. We call them third culture kids because they often don’t see themselves fitting into any one society or belonging to any one culture. So we deal with the intersection between belonging and mental health.”
In 2021, the three-part multimedia series Third Culture Minds, produced by TVNZ and hosted by Guled, won a Mental Health Service Australia New Zealand special media journalism award.
“These initiatives are important because our stories are not told or they are told by someone else.”
Telling his community’s story was particularly hard when he was propelled into the role of spokesperson for the Muslim community following the Christchurch mosque attacks.
“To have something so horrific happen to your community and to find that your community had to, in their moment of suffering, educate the rest of New Zealand and to show them their humanity was really hard.”
Guled says the attack and its aftermath is very relevant to the public sector.
“Let’s be honest – we all know bias exists, we all have our individual biases, and as we write policy and give advice, all those biases can inform the things we do as public servants. Even myself, I have my own biases but I need to not let those biases dictate my work. These are questions we must all reflect on.
“I feel that before the Christchurch attacks, there were a lot of things that were overlooked, or not prioritised, especially around social cohesion. This has now become a greater focus for the public sector. It’s very sad that it took a national tragedy for that to happen.”
disadvantages for some groups of people over others. We see that in our justice system, with so many Māori incarcerated. Institutionalised racism is a fact, and there are a number of government reports written about this. But how do we tackle that structural stuff?”
One thing we can do is begin to have really honest conversations and talk about how we eliminate barriers and address racism, he says.
“I don’t know that I have the answers, but what I do know is that people are resistant to change, and we must begin to courageously think about that and work to eliminate barriers.”
On the bright side, Guled is encouraged to see an increase in younger university graduates aspiring for a career in the public service.
“Ultimately, that will result in more diversity. Young people coming through will help create our future leaders, and the people at the top should reflect us as a society.
“That said, we need to ensure that those early in their careers are able to navigate through a public sector that is still based on a Eurocentric model.
“How do we create and shape the environment to not only manage the enormous skills and contributions that diverse cultures bring but also to support them to thrive in the public service so they stay on and contribute?
“When I started, I never had that support. The public service was very European dominated. This is changing now.”
Guled is pleased that the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mosque attacks raised insights and recommendations for the public service. Just the title of the report speaks volumes: Kō tō tātou kāinga tēnei (This is our home).
It relates to an inclusive New Zealand, welcoming of people of all ethnicities and backgrounds.
To achieve this requires a whole-of-society approach, says Guled. “We all need to think about how we can ensure it never happens again, and we all need to think about our own role.”
The public service must also address racism, he adds. “I think there are structural barriers where there are
Guled urges young people, of all backgrounds, to consider a public service career. “The public service offers a range of opportunities for you to prosper and grow in a career that gives back to society. I would encourage young people to help create a public service that is much more a reflection of the communities that make up New Zealand.”
He also urges public service leaders to consider the role they can play unlocking the full potential of their diverse talent.
“You don’t need to have lived experience to understand and empathise with another person’s experience. Having leaders who actively listen, make an effort to understand, and give time to people who are not like them is necessary to realising the potential of diverse talent.”
YOU DON’T NEED TO HAVE LIVED EXPERIENCE TO UNDERSTAND AND EMPATHISE WITH ANOTHER PERSON’S EXPERIENCE.
A consultation document published in September 2022 included responses to these issues, many involving ideas around kaitiakitanga such as:
1. Innovation: advancing knowledge and increasing productivity and wellbeing
2. Responsibility: complying with international and domestic laws and promoting a peaceful and secure space environment
3. Stewardship: using spacetech to fight climate change and better manage our natural resources and act sustainably in space
4. Partnership: better together – engaging with Māori, the public, institutions, and global partners.
Over the last five years, the space industry in New Zealand has seemingly come from nowhere to be a fast-growing sector rich in innovation, quality jobs, and export potential. New Zealand’s world-class regulation has been key in its success. Exponential growth in the industry is a global phenomenon – for example, the Indian Space Organisation has just launched thirty-six satellites for Indian company OneWeb to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink – so we need to stay competitive.
Two areas are critical to this: keeping space policy and regulation at a world-class level and ensuring the regulation of traditional aviation keeps pace.
The latter is important, not just because you have to pass through heavily regulated airspace to get to outer space, but because the line is blurring between spacetech, high-altitude aviation, and new platforms and propulsion systems. High-altitude autonomous solar-powered drones compete with satellites monitoring the environment, for example. This interface has led to the term “aerospace” instead of “space”.
Keeping policies and regulations world leading
The mid-2010s was an inflection point for the space industry in New Zealand. Rocket Lab catalysed the establishment of the New Zealand Space Agency within MBIE in 2016, followed by the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017. By 2018, Rocket Lab had captured the media and public’s imagination.
Submissions closed in October on the New Zealand Space Policy Review being conducted by MBIE. (There is also a separate consultation on an Aerospace Strategy, which includes space and advanced aviation.) “Space” is defined as “high-altitude”, meaning it includes the zone within the atmosphere but beyond normal aviation. The review seeks to:
1. Create a National Space Policy outlining New Zealand’s values and objectives on space
2. Articulate New Zealand’s broad interests across multiple activities and engagements, including those at the United Nations and with international space and security partners
3. Develop future space strategies, policies, and regulatory changes to keep pace with technological advances
4. Further engage on space policy with the public, including any key areas of interest identified through the consultation
5. Consider any legislative changes.
It lists government’s interests in space as economic (leveraging our geographic location and niche expertise), national security (promoting our interests, for example, preventing illegal fishing or regulating launching satellite constellations), international (promoting the responsible use of space), safety and security through regulation (leveraging our best-practice regulatory regime), and environmental (data from space helping guide stewardship of natural resources).
“New Zealand is an ideal place for aerospace technology development and testing. With a rich aerospace ecosystem, a highly regarded regulator, and soon-to-be created dedicated testing areas, we can move much faster here than most other places on Earth.” Michael Read, Founder, Skybase Mark Rocket, one of the founders of Rocket Lab, and now leading Kea Aerospace, drove the formation of an aerospace industry cluster in Christchurch called Aerospace Christchurch. This started small with regular meet-ups with local industry leaders and other stakeholders including mana whenua and rangatahi. It’s been successful at sparking collaboration and promoting the industry. Companies like Kea Aerospace and Dawn Aerospace are high profile examples of how the region is a hotbed of space innovation. Another is Project Tāwhaki, a partnership between Wairewa Runanga, Te Taumutu Runanga, and the government to convert 1,000 hectares on Kaitorete Spit near Christchurch into research facilities and a launch pad.
Aerospace Auckland was incorporated in 2022 with the purpose of fostering a thriving aerospace sector. It includes aerospace companies (including Rocket Lab, Astrix Astronautics, Argo Navis, Dotterel Technologies, and Zenith Astronautics), academia (including Te Punaha Atea, the Space Institute at the University of Auckland), Tataki Auckland Unlimited, BNZ, and some professional service firms.
One of the roles of both organisations is to be a voice for the industry and a driving force in regional aerospace cluster development. Aerospace Auckland’s submission on the Space
New Zealand has quickly become a major player in the space industry. Kevin Jenkins explores how this has come about and what it means for policy and regulation.
OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS, THE SPACE INDUSTRY IN NEW ZEALAND HAS SEEMINGLY COME FROM NOWHERE TO BE A FAST-GROWING SECTOR.
Policy Review called for a greater focus on the respective strengths of different regions and collaboration with economic development agencies and councils.
The submission also raised the need for more education and training. It drew on the Aerospace Skill Gap Survey 2021 (commissioned by Tataki Auckland Unlimited and ChristchurchNZ), which found significant shortages of skilled space professionals in New Zealand. Eight out of ten respondents said it is difficult to recruit within New Zealand, mostly because “applicants don’t have the right skills and/or expertise”. Sixty-five percent of respondents said their plan B was to either recruit overseas or, worrisomely, “move certain functions/parts of their business overseas” or “recruit overseas and let their staff work from that location”. This is against the backdrop of severe shortages of qualified staff for traditional aviation as well.
Aerospace Auckland argued that the space strategy goals will not be achieved if initiatives to broaden STEM and other education programmes are not accelerated. This includes the critical need to broaden the talent pool for potential aerospace scientists and engineers by encouraging involvement by more Māori, women, Pacific peoples, and other under-represented groups.
Globally, aviation regulators face a tsunami of new technologies they need to respond to if their countries are not to be left behind in the innovation race. Some argue that billions of dollars of value for Aotearoa from continued growth in our wider aerospace sector relies on regulators ensuring our aviation regulatory regime is as fit for purpose as it is for our space industry.
Current airliners look like airliners from the 1950s, but new technologies (including better batteries, better solar technology, and artificial intelligence) have led to an estimated 600 new designs currently being explored.
Technologies are also rapidly advancing in traffic management, weather forecasting, and cyber security, as well as the integration of propulsion, control, and electrical supply systems (which were previously separate and underpinned by separate technical requirements).
This means the way that aircraft are certified and the training of the certifiers may no longer be fit for purpose.
Different jurisdictions are taking different approaches to developing standards for the new designs. The European Union is endeavouring to get ahead of designs by trying to define and publish certification requirements (albeit very high-level and outcome-based) for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL)
aircraft before certification and operation. The United States is taking a different tack by responding to each iteration of a design as they are submitted until a threshold of maturity is reached, and only then developing standards.
This means the European Union is developing generic eVTOL standards, but the United States isn’t. Harmonising standards isn’t getting easier, especially with a growing emphasis on outcome and performance-based requirements.
In practice, like in other regulatory regimes, aviation regulators will be asked questions like “Can you just tell me what to do?”
However, regulators will first need to understand what technology is being developed, how it’s to be used, how its safety can be assured, and how it will integrate within a complex aviation and airspace system, before moving to define the certification requirements. The next question – especially from a New Zealand perspective – is “Can they do that fast enough to keep New Zealand competitive?”
The Civil Aviation Authority’s operational response to this fast-moving environment is a specific emerging technology programme that focuses on the following:
1. Guidance: optimising systems, processes, and guidelines so the sector understands the rules
2. System-based: systems thinking to nurture the right linkages across the industry and ensure good decisions
3. Collaboration: working with stakeholders to develop intelligence-led, risk-based regulation of emerging technologies
4. Engagement: sharing information about new technologies domestically and internationally
5. Best practice: following international best practice and setting best practice when appropriate
6. Change and influence: improving processes to improve effectiveness of new technology regulation.
The aerospace industry in Aotearoa shows we can compete globally in this most ambitious of industries. Public policy and regulation have been key to this success and keeping both as best practice will be a determinant of future success.
Kevin Jenkins is a founder of MartinJenkins (www.martinjenkins. co.nz) and a member of the inaugural board of Aerospace Auckland, and he writes about issues at the intersection of business, innovation, and regulation. Many of his articles can be found in the NZHerald.
Paula Tesoriero is the first chief executive of Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People. Kirsten Rose catches up with her.
Paula Tesoriero MNZM is a force to be reckoned with. The Chief Executive of Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People is no stranger to breaking down barriers and perceptions of what disabled people can achieve.
Growing up on the Kapiti Coast, Paula embraced cycling as it gave her a sense of freedom. She could keep up with peers, often overtaking them.
By her thirties, Paula had become a gold-medal-winning Paralympian in cycling and had carved out a reputation as an astute legal advisor at the Ministry of Justice, culminating in senior management positions, first at the High Court and then at Statistics New Zealand. In June 2017, Paula became the Disability Rights Commissioner at the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, a role she took on with gusto, protecting and promoting the rights of around 1.1 million disabled New Zealanders (24 percent of the population). Her impressive leadership and athletic aptitude led her to be appointed Chef de Mission at the 2020 Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, a challenging role due to COVID-19 restrictions impeding the build-up and competition.
Now Paula has taken on yet another challenge: leading the newly established Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People.
“It is still very early days, and there is a lot of work to do, but I am excited to be at the helm of Whaikaha and getting down to business. It means a lot to have a ministry led by a disabled person because representation matters. The first time I joined my colleagues at a full meeting of public service chief executives, I was struck by the significance of having a disabled person at the table for the first time,” she says.
“My experience as a Paralympian and Chef de Mission taught me a lot about how disabled people can change perceptions and transform society through powerful vehicles like the Paralympic movement. I think Whaikaha can drive change in a similar way. Many disabled people fought hard to make Whaikaha a reality, and the success of our organisation really matters to our community. It matters to all New Zealanders from an equity perspective, and as a disabled person myself, it really matters to me.”
From the outset, Whaikaha has involved the disabled community in its development. In the establishment phase, an online
platform was created – AmplifyU – that allowed disabled people to engage with decision makers and provide feedback on the make-up of the Ministry, including its name.
As Chief Executive, Paula now takes on overseeing Whaikaha’s establishment and ensuring the community feedback is reflected in the development of policies and processes.
“Our aim is to drive change towards a better, more independent future for disabled people, tāngata whaikaha, and their whānau. As we build Whaikaha, we will be empowering communities to drive change and support barriers coming down across the whole system. No one knows their impairment better than a disabled person, so continuing to listen to the experiences of disabled people and working at that community level across government agencies is going to be really important.”
Over the past three months, the team has been focused on ensuring a smooth transfer of existing services and support from the Ministry of Health for the approximately 43,000 disabled people receiving support on any given day. It is also recruiting staff, engaging with disabled community partners, planning, and agreeing on work priorities.
“It is a big job, but we’re making good progress,” says Paula.
“The success of Whaikaha is really visceral for me. As we grow our capacity and capability, I am hopeful that we will be in that position to really start to drive change across government, for a transformed system across key government areas.
“From next year, Whaikaha will begin work towards implementing the Enabling Good Lives approach to disability support services on a national scale. This work will be done in partnership with the disability community and with Māori. It will take time to do this effectively – to ensure it results in improved outcomes for disabled people and their whānau.”
Paula sees similarities and synergies between her new role and her previous role as Disability Rights Commissioner.
Drawing people together
“Whaikaha aims to achieve change, equity, inclusion, and better
I WAS STRUCK BY THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HAVING A DISABLED PERSON AT THE TABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME.
lives for disabled people. That is something I felt passionately about as Disability Rights Commissioner and continue to champion. Achieving this will require strong partnerships between disabled people, whānau, friends, officials, and service providers. A lot of my time as Disability Rights Commissioner involved bringing these groups closer together, which was a good foundation for the role I am in now,” she says.
“The main difference is that I’m now part of an organisation that can pull the levers of government, while also changing the way disability support services are thought about at a government level. Our view is that, rather than government agencies deciding what disability support services should look like, we need to empower disabled people and their whānau to lead these decisions. They have told us what they need to live a good life. It is our role to enable them to go and live it. This will open up huge opportunities for disabled people to access the things they want in their lives.”
“We want to help stimulate change in broader government policies and practices. Whaikaha has as an important role in working with and advising other government agencies on disability issues and providing leadership in establishing across-government mechanisms, such as the Disability Action Plan and reporting on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
“The UN Committee made sixty really powerful recommendations that cut across most government agencies to deliver change for disabled people, so that gives you a sense of the breadth of the change.
“For a long time, disabled people have been calling for change across a number of areas, such as better support when children
Paula sees the responsibility and accountability for effective services and policies for disabled people as the responsibility of every government agency.
“Legislation has provided us with a stewardship role to work alongside other government departments and entities. Together, all of government is responsible for providing support and services to all New Zealanders, including the 24 percent of people who are disabled.
“It is vital that all parts of the public sector continue to take responsibility, in their respective domains, for improving the rights and wellbeing of disabled people just as they do currently for different population groups.”
are young, an inclusive education system, and good access to healthcare services. We know some of the barriers to those services have been around cost, transport, accessible buildings, and attitudes, so helping to break those barriers down will be a focus for us. If underlying attitudes can change, then that, in and of itself, will really start to reduce those barriers and move us forward,” says Paula.
“The reason for Whaikaha’s existence is to deliver bold and transformational change for disabled people. We hope that, in time, Whaikaha will really be influencing the way Aotearoa New Zealand thinks about disability and enabling disabled people, and will be breaking down those barriers; because, at the end of the day, people are disabled by the barriers that exist in society, and that is what we need to change.”
Adithi Pandit, Grace Gollan, and Tim Arbuckle from Deloitte explore the benefits of systems thinking when trying to find solutions to tricky public sector problems.
The challenges facing the public service, and indeed Aotearoa, are fundamentally “systems” challenges – complex, cross organisational puzzles that have farreaching impacts on the lives of individuals, whānau, and communities. To create sustained, meaningful change, we must adopt a new way of thinking. Adopting a systems-thinking approach can help to create better public service outcomes. Here, we explore this concept using the challenge of transport infrastructure sustainability plans to provide ideas on how you can practically apply a systems thinking approach to your projects.
When people talk about systems, they are often referring to a set of related organisations. But a system is actually broader than that, comprising multiple interacting parts and behaviours. To better understand this, we must explore the system’s purpose (what it is producing), the different forces that shape it, and the relationships that hold the system together (interconnections).
Take, for example, the transport infrastructure system – key players include construction companies, financing and funding entities, transport users, urban designers, regulatory authorities, and planners. However, as we dig deeper, we begin to understand the forces at play, such as profit motives, sustainability imperatives, time constraints, urban aesthetics, and the interconnections that
drive actions – this might be a belief in the convenience of road travel, reluctance to invest in infrastructure until something has broken, or a commitment to a green town centre. These facets are then governed by the overarching system purpose, which is to support people’s ability to live, work, and play through moving from one place to another.
Often when we are working on wicked problems that seem intractable, it’s because they’re “systems failures”. These are times when a system gets stuck or falls into a vicious loop where proposed fixes are addressing symptoms rather than root causes or when we’re relying on external resources – such as government investment – to remedy deferred maintenance.
So, how will you know when systems thinking is the right approach? If system interventions are being applied, but the same issues keep occurring regardless (groundhog day); when a problem is solved in one part of the system and the same problem appears elsewhere (whack-amole); or when a solution ends up having an unintended counter impact (opposite day), chances are, it is time to delve into the systems world. Systems are not one dimensional and linear, and fixes must involve multiple points of intervention and retain the ability to flex to the changing environment.
Once you start mapping a system, it can be hard to stop – it’s not often we take the systems vantage point, and we can end up being so bogged down in mapping the players and connections that it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. Take the public transport system. This exists to provide a
means of getting from A to B – connecting people, communities, towns, and cities across Aotearoa. The system is made up of a transport network; public organisations responsible for governing, monitoring, and managing the networks; network suppliers; and people and communities that use the networks. Stepping back, there is also a wider mobility system that needs to consider why people travel and how they access the public transport system and make other transport choices.
There are many interactions connecting the system beyond supplier and consumer relationships, including those focused on managing the system’s inputs and outputs, such as carbon emissions. Even through this very high-level description of the public transport system, you can start to sense its huge breadth and depth.
The first step in making sense of a system is to ask what its purpose is – not what we wish it to be, but what it’s really producing. We might like our transport and infrastructure system to be about sustainability, but for a long time, it has probably been oriented around road-user convenience and moving people to work and school.
Creating a systems map is fun, but it can become something that only a systems
OFTEN WHEN WE ARE WORKING ON WICKED PROBLEMS THAT SEEM INTRACTABLE, IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE "SYSTEMS FAILURES".Tim Arbuckle
mapper can make sense of. There is a lot of value in undertaking collective sense making – bringing a group together to talk, tell stories about the system, and then ask, “What does this tell us about why things are the way they are?” Don’t forget to consider the history of the system – what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and what has changed. In contrast, ask what has stayed the same. This will enable you to explore how the system is today when compared with your collective vision for the future.
To turn a systems map into a set of actions and interventions, start with understanding your role in the system and your unique ability to influence it. You cannot change the system without challenging yourself to understand how you add value, whether it’s through your assets, capabilities, market eminence, or relationships.
Within the public transport system, Waka Kotahi oversees one of the nation’s largest asset bases and has the largest government procurement spend (including co-funding public transport services with local authorities) and with it possibly the largest government network of infrastructure suppliers. On the other hand, local authorities are well placed to gauge community needs and the interaction between urban development, place making, and the mobility needs of its citizens. Community groups can connect with people and place and have an ability to convey a perspective back into the system and advocate for it.
Take the insight into your unique abilities and consider how you will make change happen in the system. Using archetypes is a great frame for this thinking – for example, are you the “lead architect”, who’s responsible for future state blueprinting and integrated planning across system actors, or do you see yourself as more of an “orchestrator”, convening ecosystem partners and stakeholders and unlocking access to information, investment, and innovation?
Once you understand your identity in the system, you can shape a systems strategy. Remember – you can’t do this in your own echo chamber. Shaping a systems strategy means getting out there and talking to others about what they value, what they are doing, and how you can work together.
Systems are inherently about relationships. Going it alone is not an option; partnerships will be fundamental to a successful outcome and should be well established before the purpose, objectives, and actions are explored. Importantly, relationships are fluid – be prepared to change with each other along the way
One approach we have used is identifying measures at an initiative level, outcome level, and systems health level. At the initiative level, consider the indicators of strong delivery – did we do what we said we would? At the outcomes level, consider the short, mid-, and long-term impact the initiative might have on people interacting with the system. And at the systems level, consider how we might know if the system is becoming more resilient, equitable, and adaptive over time. Healthy systems are able to learn and evolve, respond to changes, take a long-term outlook, and foster innovation.
To identify potential partners and better understand them, use your systems map to understand others’ roles and explore the explicit and implicit archetypes across the system. This should bring out primary and secondary partnerships and relationships that should be built.
For instance, by working together in partnership, public and private transport actors can better co-ordinate transport solutions that can achieve better safety, environmental, and health outcomes for communities. By engaging with community groups, schools, and workplaces, the potential for uptake and changes in patterns of behaviour can only widen. But groups need to have built a level of trust and commitment to be able to act this way.
Perhaps the hardest part of systems change is meaningfully learning and measuring the impact of your journey. Investment for systems change is not without consequence. Whether it be a public or private sector business case, chances are you have a predetermined set of outcomes you need to deliver, and someone will want to know whether you are delivering the impact you said you would.
Unsurprisingly, demonstrating results in a system is hard and will take time. There will always be ambiguity and new and emerging properties that will surprise you. Often there will not be a single owner of change, and ultimately, there might be a correlation between an outcome on your intervention but no obvious way of demonstrating causality.
Working in systems is challenging, but extremely rewarding. By stepping back and understanding the complexity of the systems world, we can be a little more forgiving of the daily challenges we face in making change happen, while also seeing the bigger opportunities for shared action and energy.
Some of the most exciting shifts can occur when we align stories, relationships, and actions – like the concept of a “fifteenminute city” or the shift in hybrid working patterns, which changed our assumptions about what rush-hour traffic needed to look like.
Systems resist simple fixes, but they love shared energy – the opportunity is to seek out the areas of energy and change and invest in those. It’s just too important for us not to.
We would love to continue the conversation on systems thinking – if you have a great example to share or a gnarly systems problem to consider, contact Adithi at apandit@deloitte.co.nz
YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE SYSTEM WITHOUT CHALLENGING YOURSELF.
UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITY OF THE SYSTEMS WORLD, WE CAN BE A LITTLE MORE FORGIVING OF THE DAILY CHALLENGES WE FACE.
David: It absolutely was an ambitious project. In fact, we ended up surveying nearly 1 percent of all the fourteen- to seventeen-yearolds in New Zealand. What drove us was clear. During the 1990s, the development of new technologies began the proliferation of porn. This led to the creation of the Classification Office in 1994 to regulate this material.
While the internet was in its infancy, most adult pornographic material was still being watched in physical form. This could therefore be reviewed by the Classification Office and be age restricted, then regulated. When I became Chief Censor in 2017, the industry had completely changed. It had been some time since an adult DVD had come into our office, but pornography was still being watched.
There was a reasonable assumption that the protections were no longer effective, particularly as the average age for a child getting their first smartphone in New Zealand is eleven. Given this and the wider global industry context, it was necessary to understand the scope, scale, and impacts of the problem, as well as thinking about strategies to deal with it.
Jocelyn: From your perspective, how concerning is the problem of youth and porn in our world today?
David: It’s very concerning. Children are exposed to porn from a very early age. However, there are still many unknowns about the long-term implications of this. Part of our objective in commissioning an extensive study was to unpack these issues and gain information about exposure and prevalence.
Following on from that, we conducted research into what teenagers were looking at – what was the most popular online porn? And finally, we wanted qualitative research: talking with young people directly about how and why they engage with porn.
The findings show that this is a complex issue. Engaging with young people directly has made clear that there are impacts. However, these impacts can be subtle and far-reaching and not what we anticipated.
For many children and young people, porn is as close as their phone. In 2018, the New Zealand Classification Office undertook a three-part research programme in partnership with Kantar Public (formerly Colmar Brunton) and the Collaborative Trust. This study won the Supreme Award at the 2021 NZ Research Association Effectiveness Awards and the gold award at the 2022 global ESOMAR research effectiveness awards, the top award for the industry.
In this article, David Shanks, who commissioned the research about children watching porn when he was the Chief Censor, talks with Jocelyn Rout, co-Managing Director, Kantar Public New Zealand.
Jocelyn: Researching youth and porn is pretty ambitious. What drove you to commission the work?
For example, one of the things that comes through clearly is that young people are using porn to educate themselves about sex. This leads to significant concerns about their expectations. Commercial porn is created for adults, but young people are using it as a way of understanding sex and are getting quite seriously conflicted and confusing messages about it.
Jocelyn: The youth voice was central in the research. From your perspective, how effective or valuable was that approach?
David: It was so effective and so valuable. Our preconceptions as adults about what the problem is, how young people are thinking, and how they might be helped are almost always wrong.
Young people, teenagers, and, increasingly, children are digital natives navigating the internet in ways we can’t really understand unless we talk to them.
Pornography is a paradigm for a whole range of other internetrelated potential harm issues, which I believe are only going to become more prevalent. So, we must put the voices of youth foremost in that equation.
Jocelyn: Given all of that, and the finding that most people, including teens themselves, think that children and young people’s access to porn should be restricted, whose responsibility is it to address the issue of kids watching porn?
David: A striking result from our research was that 89 percent of young people said, “Children and young people shouldn’t be able to access this sort of material, and certainly not as easily as we can.”
The question about who’s responsible varies. One school of thought says it is the responsibility of young people themselves: they should be more accountable and resilient. Another school of thought suggests parents should be in control. Others argue that the industry is responsible since they are in effect distributing adult entertainment products to an under-eighteen audience. Finally, some place the responsibility at the government’s door: they should ensure that young people are kept safe.
My conclusion is that no isolated response will fix this problem. What is needed is an integrated strategy that covers all elements. Young people can be given tools and information to limit their access to porn; parents can be made aware of the issue and protect younger children from exposure; education can provide a counternarrative to the one presented by pornography; the industry can adhere to the checks and balances; and government can implement effective regulations.
Jocelyn: Youth had a lot to say about porn in the research and were very candid. What were some of the key lessons learnt and how have the insights and evidence helped?
David: One of the key takeaways from our research is that if you give young people an opportunity and safe space to talk about pornography, they will engage very honestly.
It quickly becomes clear that they are not the naïve and manipulated consumers that we might suppose. The authentic voices of young people immediately cuts through and connects in a way that nothing else can.
Jocelyn: There were relatively few differences in the findings along demographic lines, like gender and sexual orientation. What do you make of that?
David: These findings are very significant in terms of challenging stereotypes. It addresses some of the behavioural pressures that young women in particular were feeling – that they were supposed to act in a certain way. It also shows that watching porn is a reality for young women as well.
Different demographic groups did have different perspectives, as you might expect, but the consistency of exposure to porn and the issues related to that were very similar for people. Again, that really highlights the value of research and evidence to cut through preconceptions and stereotypes.
Jocelyn: The ad in the Keep It Real Online campaign was very popular – quickly going viral with more than 22 million views and being picked up by media outlets around the world. The message seemed to strike a chord. Did that surprise you and how did the evidence from the research guide those messages?
David: It didn’t surprise me at all. We knew from our research that this was on people’s minds – teenagers and parents of teenagers alike. When those adverts were running on national television with families all sitting in the same space, it got a reaction. The campaign adopted a direct approach, while avoiding offence. It
took people by surprise as it exposed some of the myths around pornography.
One of the findings from our research was that young people were not buying into these myths. The episode shows porn stars as “real” people genuinely concerned about the impacts of porn on the child.
This shifts the conversations away from the moralistic blame game when discussing porn.
Our approach and suggestions here helped the advert to gain traction and generate discussion rather than emotional outrage. This was the key to its success.
Jocelyn: As our world and technologies constantly change, what are the challenges over the next five to ten years? And are we better prepared to deal with these challenges?
David: I think technology is going to continue to evolve at a pace that creates massive challenges for policy makers, governments, parents, and young people.
I think we’re facing an ever-accelerating technological change that presents fantastic opportunities for engagement, entertainment, and communication, but also significant risks.
One current example is the promulgation of the “metaverse” where people have avatars sharing experiences in a virtual world. That’s cool in many respects, but there are potential downsides to an immersive, virtual world in the realm of pornography, abuse, or extremism.
We need to think in new and creative ways to deal with changes in technology. We need to be talking to the young people affected by these changes in the most direct way – although it is often these groups that policy makers initially overlook.
Jocelyn: What advice do you have for governments and public agencies around the world on what can be done to address kids watching porn?
David: Look at your evidence base. Do you have robust, effective, up-to-date evidence?
Everything we’ve been talking about is the first step – putting youth voices front and centre, using research that is objective, unbiased, direct, and informed. The next step is to understand that this is not a simple regulatory fix.
A law change will not be enough. You need to think about the education system, the health system, about tools and resources –all as part of an integrated strategy. This is why we pulled together an inter-agency working group. This is a coalition to consider the evidence and to consider how we can apply that evidence to make the change that’s needed to help young people.
Once you’ve got a coalition of agencies, you’ve got a force multiplier effect that might enable you to find the mature, systematic response that covers all the bases.
This article is an abridged version of an article first published by Kantar Public in its publication PUBLIC.
TECHNOLOGY IS GOING TO CONTINUE TO EVOLVE AT A PACE THAT CREATES MASSIVE CHALLENGES FOR POLICY MAKERS, GOVERNMENTS, PARENTS, AND YOUNG PEOPLE.
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