There's been a couple of leaks of Cabinet papers in just the first two weeks of the Government. Obviously, they're designed to hurt the new Government- and they're probably coming from within the public service.
Bless- that's got to be your first thought about this. Because obviously, whoever's doing the leaking is going out of their way to snaffle these Cabinet documents and get them leaked to the media cause they think they're on to dynamite here.
They're obviously not, these Cabinet papers are a snorefest.
The first one from Monday last week shows that the people most negatively impacted by the rollback of the fair pay agreements are women, Māori, Pasifika and young people.
Which maybe I would care about if those people were helped by the fair pay agreement. But they haven't, because there are no fair pay agreements actually in place.
And the second is that the Government has suspended the regulatory impact statements on all of the polices in the 100-day plan. Which again, I don't really care about because many of the things in the 100-play are repeals.
You don't need any paperwork to tell you the pros and cons of going back to the way it was only a few months and years ago, do you?
It's not really dynamite, either of these things.
I'm going to tell you who comes out of this badly- it's backfiring on the public service. Not the Government, the public service.
Because these are the people who will go to great lengths to tell you that they are politically neutral and they can work for any Government.
The boss of the public servants once took me to task in a column, arguing they could be very politically neutral all the time- they're that amazing at working in the service of the country.
And yet here we are, leaking against the new Government that hasn't even had a chance yet because they've only been in for a couple of weeks.
If you don't want to take my word for it, take the word of Catherine Delore, Head of Communications at Health NZ.
She wrote on her LinkedIn page that she was 'deeply disappointed and frustrated' to read about leaks of Cabinet papers- and the suggestion that this is happening within the public service.
She also claimed leaking by public servants is a gross betrayal of trust, because they're here to serve the Government of the day and people who cannot do that should 'opt out or be cut out'.
She's bang on.
Of course, public servants have got a problem with this Government because this Government wants to cut a bunch of them out. And of course, people in the public service are going to have their own opinions, we all do. They're entitled to hold them.
And of course, importantly, there is a place for whistle-blowers. But the stuff whistle-blowers leak is momentous. The things that they expose are serious.
The impact of rolling back FPAs and not doing RIS? Bless.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
3 comments:
The reality is that each leak is an opportunity to sack a Govt. worker with no severance.
Anyone who is caught to have leaked any document to a third party should face instant dismissal.
If the sackings are frequent then the leaking will cease.
Disaffected Public Servants are not wanted. The taxpayer demands and expects these people to act in their roles a servants to the public regardless of their politics.
Of course the public service is leaking current govt documents. When so many staff have been recruited and promoted for their pro maori proclivities the present outcome was inevitable.
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