Why we need immediate change and why Shane Jones is 100% right to attack public service

26 Comments

1. I don’t often agree with Shame Jones but he is right on the button with this and as of late I seem to agree with him on a few issues. Keep up the good work Shane.

2. The toxic culture is most evident in district and regional councils, which do not even comply with NZ Statutes: they are required to be efficient, effective and transparent, and most definitely are none of those things; they are required to make long-term plans for future conditions and completely disregard everything that will determine the future.

   City, district and regional councils act like parasites that such money out of communities and transfer that money to corporations and opportunists. And woe betide you if you break one of their arbitrary rules (many of which are extremely counterproductive): you will be jumped on by a power-crazed official!. And there is zero accountability, of course.

   Sadly, the Adern government is still fully committed to business-as-usual when it is perfectly obvious to anyone with a brain that business-as-usual is both highly destructive and unsustainable.

   The inevitable crash draws closer by the day.

   With Brent oil consistently trading above $70 a barrel ($73.23 today, oil being the lifeblood of the economy), and the NZ still dollar sliding (just over 71 cents US today) a lot more people are going to get ‘pushed off the cliff’ over the coming months.

   And, undoubtedly, our grossly inefficient city, district and regional councils will soon announce their next round of rate increases.

3. Me need to clean up these little fiefdoms created by the Natzi’s and ACT ?

   1. We do @ JR, but the problem is that it wasn’t the Natzi’s and ACT that created them, but it IS those Natzi’s and ACT that have learned to manipulate them so that it’s almost become an art form.
      There also seems to be some interesting ‘conversations going forward’ between Messrs Eichbaum and Hughes.
      Between them I’m not convinced they really understand the culcha that’s developed – relying on the theoretical on how the corporatised PS is designed to work (and therefore it does), and a Hughes experience – who thinks that because he took the time to go around meeting every CEO at the coalface, he’s therefore ‘down with the Public Service peeps’.
      As I said in another comment, I’ve been told Hughes is a decent sort of bloke (which could actually be part of the problem), so I’ll wait and see, although what I witnessed last week doesn’t really give me much hope

4. Auckland Council would be a good start, bunch of performing monkeys ?

5. It is very hard to immunise yourself against the doctrines, messages and lies of the Right, and it almost inevitable that some public servants will happily (perhaps unconsciously?) take on malevolent attitudes towards the unfortunates who they deal with. Neoliberal and Tory/Natzi proganda does seep in. In a very long and detailed account of the state of the British NHS in a recent issue of the London Review of Books, a family is mentioned who had extensive (and good) medical treatment, mainly for an elderly woman (multiple operations). At the end they were asked about the NHS and still parroted the trope that there was “waste” and when asked if they would pay more tax to support it, said no way. Go figure.

6. The ‘no-surprises’ policy has a lot to answer for. It has meant that public servants are forced to get approval from ministers before releasing information that should be public available. It means that data that should be provided live is doled out on a 3 monthly basis so that by the time the public know about it, it is already historic.

   Once the public start getting OIA requests filled in a timely and honest manner then I’ll start to think we might be making progress.

7. I’m with Idiot-Savant on this one. If Ministers are upset with the pace of things, then they need to start replacing them with more suitable staff, rather than giving ministers even more power.

   1. I hope you’re wrong on this. I know that when Peter Hughes was CE at MSD he made it clear that clients were to be treated respectfully, and well.

      The problem may well be the calibre of NZ’s public servants.

      Unlike other historically effective major civil services – UK China Russia India etc NZ does not have Civil Service entry exams. I think it used to be School Cert when I was young.

      In some of these other countries entry is quite competitive, and candidates vie for places. They also have to sit written exams to gain promotion.

      Clearly IRD for example, has fairly high recruitment standards, but others may recruit on typing speeds, keyboard skills etc. I’m told one big govt dept has only oral tests for promotion as it’s assumed that staff can’t cope with written ones. I was told that staff are too scared to speak at meetings. This person said he told the manager that generic letters were grammatically incorrect, but the manager didn’t care.

      If people’s lives are being made wretched routinely, that’s totally unacceptable. Years of neoliberalism have successfully demonised the poor both here and elsewhere, and that is evil.

      For a start, public service entrants probably need to be given psychometric tests, and the psychopaths and the sociopaths redirected away from any contact with fellow humans whose lives they may damage. Pity we can’t do similar with politicians.

      1. I know for a fact that council officers use words they don[t even know the meaning of. And their errors are not corrected within the system because there is no accountability. There is a system of perpetuation of errors.

         We should also bear in mind that if the person at the top is rotten, there is a great tendency for people with ethics to leave or be driven out. They are then replaced by rotten people, and the culture of rottenness takes over the entire organization.

         Also important in this discussion is the Dunning-Kruger effect. In summary, a person who is incompetent or cannot cope but is richly rewarded for being incompetent and not coping will regard themselves as competent and coping.

         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

   2. I agree too for the reasons Idiot-savant gives, but greater accountability and more flexibility to control the Mandarin’s is required perhaps… if they are creating roadblocks to policy change, that shouldn’t be permitted and should be able to be dealt with…is it is hard to get rid of public servants once in the job for a while? Also, what is the culture within these departments? The suicide reported in the paper today very much looks to be workplace related. I don’t think that guys manager is smelling of roses.

8. “…..still sadistically cutting beneficiaries off welfare for innocuous bullshit like missing a phone call”

   Maybe Shane can start with these power mad assholes…

   1. Yeah, maybe he could start sending a few really terrifying memo’s with question marks

9. Hopefully TDB readers will also consider the other of your posts today because it amounts to the same shit, if only with a slightly different stink

   https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/04/26/doc-prying-spying-gets-caned-council-of-outdoor-recreation-associations/

   You’re correct about a number of things.
   Our PS has become a number of little corporatised feifdoms sometimes where peons operate in fear of their masters; where its masters take credit for any successes but are prepared to throw underlings under the bus for any failures, and where the promises of the 80s public service reforms have been a complete failure (by which I mean all those promises of efficiency and effectiveness, depoliticisation, and accountability).
   Plainly NONE of those promises have happened, and over time – the exact opposite.

   In my comments on that other post, I’d neglected to mention the antics of the feifdoms running Health and Education, or even NZTA.

   Let’s not fool ourselves – the antics of our senior public servants are becoming a bit insulting to a collective public intelligence.
   Whilst I agree with Idiot/Savant’s concern, he must surely also be under no illusion that there’s a horse that’s already bolted as he rails against the obfuscation and roadblocks put up by our supposedly impartial public servants when dealing with OIA requests. He’d also be aware of crony appointments that the likes of Wayne Mapp can be relied upon to justify in pretense of n ‘impartial’ public service – rely
   ing on the theoretical process for appointing the leaders of the various feifdoms (and yes……Labour once did it too – thankfully before we got
   coalition that appears to be committed to social change and support).

   Whilst on this post, we concentrate on the antics of WINZ, let’s not forget all the other failings of agencies under its aegis, nor those under health, education, infrastructure, local government, defense et al.

   In the 3rd World, corruption is usually overt. In little ole NuZull clutching to the idea that we remain a 1st World club member – it’s covert (I know which I prefer because it’s easier to deal with).
   As Martyn? has pointed out – one sees apps used to communicate with T&C, just for example. When you delve deeper, you also see other feifdoms still coming to terms with the new boss in town (and one which is backed by the mandate of the electorate. That mainstream media will also have to come to terms with it too, or learn no to bleat like stuffed pigs, or little bah lambs when they become irrelevant).

   I’m told by someone who should know, that our SSC is a decent sort of bloke. I’m hopeful he’ll start dealing with the indecent!

10. Shane Jones can do what the Natz do, restructure and put their cronies in, you don’t need to change the policy.

    Even though I think restructuring is destructive it probably has to be done, due to the rot of the last decade full of neoliberals and imbeciles .

    Start with checking if personal are stealing or committing fraud on company expense accounts – the recent DHB and transport prosecutions were illuminating of what public servants have been getting up to under the Natz and it aint pretty and it aint legal either!

    Under those, will be the bullies taking advantage of the trougher’s lack of management to bully their peers and customers (aka WINZ) and create a culture of fear within their fiefdom.

    Then there will be the private sector contracts to cronies which can be cancelled and new service providers used.

    Drain the swamp!

    1. I tend to agree with you Math … oops @savenz.
       We could start being as punitive with some of our senior management as they seem to see fit with the public they supposedly serve.
       At one time for example, public servants weren’t supposed to accumulate air points for personal use – probably still the case.
       So what did they start doing? they simply put their travel on the AMEX and claimed it back as expenses – keeping the airpoints.
       Let’s see whether WINZ senior management stack up with airpoint accumulation when they sanction someone over a couple of Tinder dates.
       That’d of course be a lot less punitive than abruptly stopping someone’s income.
       Let’s see how many have benefited from paid-for business lunches from suppliers (at one time, another no-no).
       It’ll seem inconsequential to them, yet they seem to see fit to apply a different set of standards to those they’re there to serve.

       1. Agreed ONCEWASTIM,

          We need to do another 1980’s labour government style “great kwango hunt” and rid these horrible national creeps out of our public services agencies now or they will ruin labour’s chances to make good by 2020 and then loose to another nasty national selloff of everything else they hadn’t already sold. Wake up Labour you are being routed by national party members running your government agencies.

          I believe Shane Jones is 100% right on this. get rid of these creeps now.

11. A real ‘FULL EMPLOYMENT’ policy and the Winz sadists would be out of a job. We will know we have one when we see ‘Staff Wanted’ signs on business gateposts. (I haven’t seen one since 1983).

12. At least Shane Jones has the kahunas to stand up and tell it how it is, you are not going to sort out the Neoliberal B/S by pussy footing around. It is time to hit the reset button b4 it is late. 40 Years of Neoliberalism has stuffed what was once great country with a great future. It has been stuffed by hopeless politicans, Holyoake, Muldoon, Lange & Douglas, Bolger and Shipley and most recently by Key and English to name a few ?

13. Too much focus here in NZ on the crude CPI (Consumer Price Index). I mean in their basket of goods they include sell phone cases – an item many of us get for free or buy online for cents on the dollar.

    When house prices have been going up in double digits and wages are nowhere near keeping pace, many citizens find themselves forced out to the streets.

    Part of the solutions has be letting people work and accepting lots of startups fail. Banks in NZ for example don’t lend to start ups, let alone new, limited liability companies.

    In South Korea, home to the likes of a little company called Samsung, they support new companies and provide liquidity for 3-5 years, then cut the cord, letting companies sink or swim – no bailouts, no ongoing corporate welfare.

    On Q+A or The Nation I herd a Labour Minisiter say, ‘we need to face the fact NZ is never going to make the likes of cellphones’. I thought .. why not?

14. Screw Shane Jones, we do not need such BS as he suggests, what we need is a new CODE for the public service, and some legislative reforms that may streamline processes. What I heard Shane say on Morning Report was total provincial overlord kind of talk, BS.

    NO way do we need direct appointments of local body managers and CEOs, we need new guidelines and more transparency, not quasi dictatorial new rules. Stuff you, Shane, this populist crap is better left outside NZ Inc, and to third world countries.

    1. Wow strong words sir, but I agree too ripe for cronyism

       1. One thing tho third world countries are not the basket of deplorables everything bad should be referred to

15. I remember the IRD mission statement was “It’s our job to be fair”
    It should be the mission statement of every government department.
    Yes, the “culture” in government departments that members of my family and I have had to deal with over the last 9 years has clearly shifted from being amenable to being an army of “blockers.”
    Three members in my family unsuccessfully grappled with extraordinary, very unfair treatment from the Accident Compensation Corporation, the Superannuation Department in WINZ and the Ministry of Education – each on substantial and unrelated matters.
    Instead of quickly, intelligently and economically resolving the very valid and genuine issues raised , tax payer money has been wasted on years of procrastination; endless correspondence, reports from people not really qualified in the subject area to examine or report, reviews and re-reviews and court appearances., stalling and stalling – even ignoring, until they were alerted to it , legislation that allowed the use of discretion.
    By pedantically hiding behind rigid legislation they have failed to “be fair”
    Good on Shane Jones … and good luck !

16. And now this:
    https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/04/25/106218/culture-of-silence-or-a-cover-up

    Yet another example?

17. agree with Mr Jones on this one, yes there are caveats, but, the fact remains that senior public servants are not members of the underclass! they are bloody nat voters when it comes down to it

    they should be rolled over at every election, and the bloody PSA needs to grow up and become a working class organisation, rather than apologists for the bureaucracy

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