23 July 2012
The Better Public Services proposals for improving New Zealand public administration include a number of issues that have been the subject of evidence given recently to the House of Lords Constitution Committee reviewing civil service accountability.
The role and responsibilities of special advisers have been considered at each of the evidence sessions over the last six weeks. The extraordinary role of special advisers is well recognised at Westminster, where appointees do not purport to be departmental officials as is the case with ministerial advisers in New Zealand. Special advisers have their own appointment process , lines of responsibility and special advisers’ code of conduct.
In Britain special advisers are temporary civil servants. In New Zealand there is no alternative to them being a departmental employee like any other public servant, and therefore subject to the code of conduct common to all public servants. The effect of law is that they must conduct themselves in a politically neutral way, although this must be more honoured in the breach than the observance!
In this regard, Eichbaum and Shaw have commented about ‘the barbarians at the gate’. And New Zealand, seems to have gone overboard in the number of Ministerial advisers compared with the British practice. The Better Public Services Cabinet Paper No 6 on Amendments to the State Sector Act discusses the position of ministerial advisers (para 48 – 53). There are 151 of them. This is many more than the number (85) supporting all British ministers. ( Canada and Australia have very many more.)
The Cabinet Paper outlines statutory changes giving effect , to a large degree, to the de facto position. Special provisions would be introduced for ministerial staff, and their selection would take into account the preferences of the Minister they would be supporting. The State Services Commissioner would be empowered to develop a code of conduct with variations to reflect the political responsibilities of ministerial advisers.
Ironically some evidence to the Constitution Committee is that changes should be made also to arrangements for special advisers at Westminster. Suggestions were that there were too many special advisers, that “many were no more than glorified press officers, and political press officers at that”.
Professor Lord Hennessy’s evidence was that there should be two categories of special adviser—“those who really know something, can help test out what the machine is producing and what the think tanks are producing and have a background and self confidence to do that”. He said that he didn’t “want to be unkind to the British political class, but it has often been a mystery to me why they want the other sort, in their early 20s, to be the bag-carriers and so on. The one quality that the political class is not short of is political prejudice, and there is no need to bring in young men and women with political science degrees to reinforce your existing prejudices. I suggest you go for two categories of special adviser – those who know and those who believe. If we have to cull the 85, which is far too many, those who believe should be ruthlessly culled.”
www.ssc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/bps-2306571.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_advisers_(UK_government)
www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/constitution/CivilServ/CNST270612ev4.pdf
Integrity Talking Points 
My colleague Associate Professor Richard Shaw and I have used the phrase ‘Barbarians at the Gate’, but my recollection is that it was in the title of a paper and was followed by a question mark. Some brief comments:
1. Our research indicates that there is the potential for what we have characterised as ‘administrative politicisation’ but that the (reported) incidence of political staff over-stepping the mark (i.e. funnelling advice, providing directions to public servants, unilaterally altering advice etc) appears to be limited. This notwithstanding there is overwhelming support from both officials and advisers who participated in our research for a dedicated code of conduct for staff of this kind.
2. Care needs to be taken in how numbers are counted and apples compared with apples when it comes to cross-country comparisons. I would doubt that the New Zealand executive branch is over-populated by political staff relative to other jurisdictions. New Zealand is not an outlier characterised by excessive numbers. What is more important than the count is the functional role, and the influence – potential and realised – of these staff.
3. What is more important is that there is presently no code of conduct for these staff. In 2008 a proposal by the SSC to move on this area was rebuffed – in a letter signed by a political appointee, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff – on the basis that the SSC had more pressing issues to deal with.
4. What is being proposed as a remedy here is nothing of the kind in reality. It is simply a tidy-up to get around the fact that as things currently stand Chief Executives (and particularly the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs) may not be totally complaint with the State Sector Act because of the manner in which political staff employed on events-based contracts are employed.
5. Note also the assumption that these are Ministerial Advisors appointed at the behest of Ministers – that has not always been the case (and the contracts of these staff have reflected that) – Prime ministers (and their chiefs of staff) have been active participants in recruitment, appointment, and management of these staff.
6. Happily we have not, as yet, experienced the kinds of egregious excesses that have occurred in other jurisdictions (Moore/Sixsmith in the UK or the ‘children overboard’ affair in Australia) – there is an opportunity here to put things in order, and to ensure that political staff in executive government are able to add value, while at the same time ensuring that New Zealand continues to have the benefit of a no-partisan and expert public service that provides free, frank and comprehensive advice – advice that is both responsive and responsible. This Cabinet Paper suggests that the opportunity is at risk, yet again, of being lost.