Politics in New Zealand is presented to the general public as theatre or sport. What is really going on is often misunderstood.
For the executive (the government) contains not only the politicians whom we hear so much about but, the bureaucracy, which has a considerable impact on the governing of the country. Consider the covid vaccine rollout.
The grumbling about the rollout includes the claims that the priority system does not seem to be working properly, while many of those entitled to a jab have found the exercise frustrating. Grumbling is an integral part of New Zealand gossiping. It usually soon passes. Ultimately the difficulties will not matter much providing the border quarantine holds. It is one of the benefits of the success of our covid elimination strategy that we have the time to respond which most other countries have not. (However it is potentially fragile; any local emergence of the delta variant or another similarly infectious strain could mean that this time could be severely limited.)
The main grumble has been the slowness of the rollout. Our vaccination rate is below that of the countries with which we like to compare ourselves. (The last ranking I saw put 113 countries above New Zealand.)
What the theatricals fail to observe is that the crucial decision was made late last year when the government contracted for the supply of the Pfizer vaccine. Since then supply has been much as planned and the vaccination rate has followed the supply.
Why has there been a slow supply rate? The government did not choose a slow rollout. Rather it took as much as the drug company was willing to sell it, as quickly as the company was willing to deliver it (which was far slower than either politicians or health officials would have preferred). Perhaps the drug company facing a production constraint (relative to huge demand from across the world); perhaps it was compounded by the company having a prioritisation protocol according to the severity of the incidence of COVID-19 (which would have placed us late in the queue). Additionally, there were considerable logistic issues ranging from Medsafe approval to having the people and facilities to jab us.
What I have not been able to find is the paper where the government made that key decision of the slow rollout. In principle, it ought to have had some options given to it but in practice it may have been that a series of incremental political decisions led to technical decisions which locked us into the slow path.
So the slow rollout may not have been a simple political decision but a series of bureaucratic ones reflecting practical realities (like the need to build up a working national immunisation register and booking system). They were also made in a situation of considerable uncertainty (like which vaccine to use and how effective it would be; we know more now, of course, but there are still gaps in our knowledge).
While under the water the feet have been paddling away, above the water the swans have been snapping at one another. The whingeing of the critics is uncomfortable. Did they say six months ago that the planned rollout was going to be too slow? Blessed as they are with 20/20 hindsight, the critics’ arguments amount to an unsubstantiated claim that they would have done it better. Had the critics been making those early decisions they would probably have made much the same ones, such is the weight of the technical issues which the bureaucracy was struggling with.
It is the same superficial thinking which leads to the demand that the government must tell when it is going to open up our borders. There are so many uncertainties, the government has not made a decision, although it is very unlikely that there will be major changes before next year. In the interim some of the uncertainties will be reduced – by research and by the experience of other countries who open up first. In the circumstances it is right not to have a plan, even if the uninformed and self-interested are demanding one.
You can see why being in opposition is often a very poor preparation for being in Cabinet, why some who shine in public as opposition spokespeople prove to be disappointing ministers. Meanwhile some, who seem to doze out of government prove, competent in it; they are thinking, rather than reacting.
But as the covid rollout demonstrates, the quality of the bureaucracy the ministers command matters (although perhaps half of ministers speak on behalf of their ministries rather than lead them).
A successful example is Megan Woods, who holds the very difficult housing portfolio. Four years ago she would not have been marked out for Cabinet success. (Who was the last Minister of Housing who was a marked success?) Labour came to power without a ministry of housing, it having been ingested into the Ministry of Business, Industry and Employment by a megalomaniac minister. Moreover, the policy failure goes far back in a sector where past decisions overwhelm new management. Two decades of failure cannot be fixed in two minutes even if the commentariat – which has given the two minutes thought – implies it can. The best we may hope for is a series of measures which provide a foundation for the future.
Many of the difficulties occur because we underestimate how complicated the housing sector is, pretending that it can be treated in a similar manner to most other sectors by using the narrowest economic analysis of supply and demand. That is the mistake of the ACT policy proposal, which assumes that the housing problem can be simply resolved by some changes on the supply side due to government intervention.
It’s the characteristic neoliberal stance – if a market is not working it must be the government’s fault. Remove that failure and the market will miraculously solve all our housing problems. Yeah right.
The same thinking bedevils the electricity market. It was restructured largely under neoliberal principles in the late 1990s. Since layers of interventions have been placed on top to get the theoretical notion to conform to reality. Even so, it broke down in puzzling ways when there was a power shortage which led to the blackout. It could happen again. My guess is that it requires a complete overhaul of thinking including, possibly, changes of the way production units are owned and managed. Woods is also the Minister of Energy.
But at least we can credit ACT with having a housing policy and not just whingeing. I wonder if this is the reason it, and its leader, is doing so well in the polls relative to National.
We cannot yet rule out that there will be a National-Act government elected in 2023. Who can predict what unexpected event will occur in the next two years? If, for instance, the MIQ seriously fails, the government will be in trouble. (How many people will say ‘I told you so’, even if they haven’t. Among them will be current advocates of weakening border controls.)
A predictable factor in the government's success is the performance of the bureaucracy. I thought John Key handled the issue nicely for political purposes. He would blame the officials for any government failure and promise to fix it up. Perhaps he did, although he (and this government) paid little attention to the structural problems the state services face; sometimes Key's government's actions compounded them.
This column has been largely about some of the bureaucracy’s successes. The previous one was about some of its failures. Either through its incompetence and inertia or through weak ministers (often both) one can see the current government’s reputation being undermined by the bureaucracy. Perhaps the electorate will believe that the other side will better command it.