1 July 2011
The New Zealand Public Service when established in 1912 was modelled on the British Civil Service – a merit based, apolitical career service. These characteristics still give strength to both Services.
The State Sector Act specifies how Public Service appointments must be made. Vacancies must be advertised in a way that will enable suitably qualified people to apply. And the person selected must be best suited for appointment. The Cabinet Manual requires that all employees must act with a spirit of service to the community and meet high standards of integrity and conduct in everything they do. In particular, they must be fair, impartial, responsible, and trustworthy. Impartial means politically neutral.
Intriguingly it was only in 2010 that the principles of merit and impartiality in the British Civil Service were established by statute. A new Civil Service Commission was established to monitor the merit appointment process and to manage complaints under a statutory code of conduct. A Commissioner for Public Appointments is tasked with ensuring the process remains apolitical.
The two roles now have a joint Commissioner. This watchdog is to audit appointments made since the British election after allegations that the coalition has exploited loopholes that allow ministers to recruit people on short-term contracts without advertising first. The hope is that the audit findings will convince people that government is now largely free of cronyism. This follows allegations that since the election the government has appointed a string of Conservative advisers and ex-staffers into Civil Service posts using expediency rules that allow a few appointments to be exempted from the usual tight recruitment process.
In the first seven months of the coalition, 30 appointments were made without an open competition using short-term contracts. These can be seen as the equivalent of the events based Ministerial adviser positions that support New Zealand ministers.
The joint commissioner is reported as saying that “I don’t mind there being special advisers and I don’t mind there being a few more – at least we know who they are and what they are doing and how they are regulated.” “Where the anxieties arise is if you get blurring of the lines between the civil service and political advisers and if you get people coming into the civil service who people suspect are political advisers in disguise. That is something that then damages both sides.”
He said that you can never …”relax completely on cronyism and political interference. Particularly on cronyism. There’s a natural tendency in appointment processes for people to want to appoint the people they know and have dealt with. I want to make sure that we challenge that tendency.”
A report published this week recommends major reform to the way ministerial appointments to government jobs are made.
http://civilservicecommission.independent.gov.uk/Downloads/download,3bdc5ed6ff8.html
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/28/civil-service-political-appointments-audit
Integrity Talking Points 
My sense is the concern in the UK is with the coalition’s appointment of former special advisers (the equivalent of NZ’s ministerial advisers) into civil service positions, bypassing standard competitive processes.
By contrast, the UK has a more transparent and explicit regulatory regime vis a vis political advisers than is the case here in NZ. In particular, they’ve long had a special code of conduct for political advisers, something we still haven’t got around to drafting …
The Brits and several of the Australian jurisdictions treat Ministerial / political advisers as a separate category of appointment, with different status and conditions from employees in the Public / Civil Service. UK, Australia and Canada still have a whole of career service with benefits flowing from seniority. Political advisers are limited in their ability to get a fast track entry into that career service.
New Zealand abandoned notions of a permanent Public Service in the late 1980s. There are few benefits of long and continuous service – and despite a SSC guideline, few departments will recognise previous service with another department. But this also obviates the need to erect barriers to what in UK, Australia and Canada would be considered an unfair, backdoor entry. Ministerial advisers in New Zealand are employees of the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs. All employees in a Public Service department must be appointed under the provisions of the State Sector Act. In theory they can be no different from any other departmental employee. Their chief executive must maintain standards of integrity and conduct which applies equally to all departmental employees. They are State sector employees required by the Cabinet Manual to be impartial ( and fair, responsible and trustworthy). They are subject to the State Services Commissioner’s code which, in respect of departments, cannot be adapted to recognise the legal, commercial or other character of the department.
There is no statutory ability to apply unique standards for Ministerial advisers. It is not so much a case of not getting around to drafting a special code, but of legislation that would make a nullity of any code purporting to differ from the code that applies to everyone in the Public Service. If we want to go down the British or Australian path, New Zealand needs either to employ Ministerial advisers through a non Public Service department, or allow different codes to be applied to departments in the same way as different code may be applied to Crown Entities.