Posts by David Chittenden
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Kumara Republic,
It’d either be the catalyst for a Damascene conversion, or it’ll reinforce their inner Randy Weaver.
My thoughts exactly, but not as artfully articulated!
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
There are economists who don't go along with the Treasury orthodoxy. In fact, NZ has a particularly hard-core right-wing monoculture amongst economists, compared to other nations. It would make sense for the next left-wing government here to repeople Treasury from overseas.
Thanks for that - a good read. On austerity, have you seen these guys? Be Outraged - There are alternatives! (pdf)
Yeah I agree. We bought the neo-liberal agenda unbelievably well in NZ and it permeates even us who are against it. I spent some time in Sweden and Norway and after finding out how Norwegians would build hugely expensive undersea tunnels to islands with 50 inhabitants, even I was shaking my rational economic head. (But they do have lots of oil money and that's how they want to spend it.)
I think there are many good people in NZ as well, but yes, some fresh blood would be good. We need to reform the mandated tools of policy analysis (see another post of mine) and there are some amazing, but often complex, tools out there. We need to seriously train public servants to use them and we need to make departments responsible for other department's outcomes, as well as their own. This would really help to get beyond the unbelievably stupid situation we have now where we can either have an economy or an environment. (And there are other examples ...)
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Which is a highly political viewpoint.
I think it's more a case of where ideology and the tools of analysis considered acceptable by Treasury (or even mandated in legislation, public service guides etc) and politics overlap, rather than Treasury being political. (Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.) Examples of tools of analysis are our beloved cost-benefit analysis and the % rate used in return on investment calculations. I worked for a bit on climate change and the minister was always pushing for low discount rates ('social discount rates', say 3% or less) because climate change is such a long term issue. Using rates of 7% (or whatever it was) makes absolutely no sense and has a huge impact on the supposed benefit of a policy, but Treasury loved to hold the rule book on that one.
Fundamentally, the structural set up of the New Zealand civil service is fucked, and has been since the '84 Labour government reformed it. It will need to be fixed, at one point or another.
Absolutely agree (see my earlier post), but here the biggest culprit is the State Services Commission. They have the mandate for improvement but seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with it and unfortunately that goes for most public service workers as well in my experience. That said, there are always a number of agitators working within the system pushing for change - and that goes for within Treasury as well. Unfortunately, most get frustrated and don't stay long but there are some who stick around and don't just get sucked into the system.
The role Treasury has had here is deeply concerning. It raises real questions about Makhlouf's job.
I hate to say it but I think this is completely normal Treasury behaviour (again see my earlier post). Change is definitely needed but it's systemic change. Removing Makhlouf alone would achieve nothing.
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Kumara Republic,
On the other hand, Treasury has shot down some harebrained socialism-for-the-rich schemes, such as tax breaks for private health insurance, and bigger still, the PM’s pet project to turn Auckland into a South Seas Wall Street.
Sure! I don't think the Treasury is quite as political as some here have suggested. They are certainly rather neo-liberal economically ideological but their overarching (unstated) ideology is to stop the stupid politicians from doing anything too excessive ...
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Hard News: Briefing, blaming, backing down, in reply to Sacha,
which the current govt wanted to merge with, you guessed it, Treasury.
Ha! I must have missed that (having been out of the country for a few years). If we want to preserve any semblance of an apolitical public service, the State Service Commission's functions would seem to not quite fit (to put it mildly).
PS - living now in Mexico really puts political 'influence' into perspective ...
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On Treasury's role:
The three Treasury outcomes represent areas over which the Treasury has the greatest influence towards achieving the Government's goals. These outcomes are:
- Improved Economic Performance
- A Stable and Sustainable Macroeconomic Environment
- A More Effective and Efficient State SectorEach of these outcomes reflects - and gives effect to - the Treasury's roles as an organisation.
In my opinion, because of this dual 'economic - state sector' adviser role they tend to feel that they have a valid opinion on pretty much everything. This isn't helped by the culture of 'contestable policy advice' that was set up in the late 80s (I think) where basically ministries are in competition with each other. It's a huge problem when we need policies to produce sound economic, social, environmental, educational etc outcomes at the same time rather than one policy area 'winning' and others 'losing'.
Government ministries are always looking for Treasury's support when developing policy advice because it is much easier getting their advice accepted. This is even more the case when the non-Treasury minister (in this case the education minister) is relatively weak around the Cabinet table.
Back to their role on 'A More Effective and Efficient State Sector'. As most Treasury types are economists (and a particular flavour of economist) they seem to just skip over the word 'effective' and focus on 'efficient' - which should mean 'economically efficient' but usually seems to mean 'cheaper'. I think this economic efficiency fixation which, btw, is much more prevalent in NZ than in Europe and possibly elsewhere, is quite destructive to the real outcomes we care about - decent jobs, clean air, a good education etc.
I don't have any idea about the differing policy advice between the Education Ministry and the Treasury in this instance, but in my opinion Treasury should largely defer to the Education Ministry's advice on education and focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of various policy options, within the direction of the government of the day.
(Btw, the other central agencies are the State Services Commission and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.)
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An appalling tribute to Adam Yauch (unless you like Coldplay I guess)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LVr4UP9ntLs -
It seems holo-worlders are taking things into their own hands ... http://i.imgur.com/rZhSV.png
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OnPoint: Some of My Best Friends are Consultants, in reply to Hilary Stace,
You just need to look at the sort of projects coming out on the GETS website.
I understand that only tenders at or above $100,000 need to go through the GETS system, so there will be a huge amount of consulting going on that doesn't make it on to GETS. As it has been pointed out, GETS is a slow and painful process so it is often easier to break large potential contracts up into chunks of less than $100,000. After one contract is completed, the next stage still has to go out for tender (just not on GETS). So it can lead to a situation where government agencies will probably go with those that won the previous tender (as it is seen as a continuation of the same work) and annoy other bidders with wasted time developing their proposals.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Absolutely. Avaaz is doing some amazing work. And it really does appear that signing something is making a difference if enough people do it and it is delivered in the right way. Not that I sign everything they propose ...