Remembering the ways in which the same sorts of people tried to block progress when I was a minister during the major reforms of the 1980s, I detect a similar pattern emerging amongst those opposed to change. Many influential people seem born to resist it. Their positions depend on the status quo. Several bad eggs around the Public Dis-Service Association are constantly receiving information from unhappy civil servants, and in turn the P(D)SA provides it to selected journalists who then produce columns that used to be called “stinky fish articles”. They attack the new policies before the wider public have been able to get their heads around what the Cabinet is actually proposing. The difference between now and the 1980s is that Chris Luxon’s government doesn’t know how to handle such blockades, and too often shuffles about like Joe Biden on a bad day.
Stinky fish material appeals to many journalists at the New Zealand Herald and to the likes of TV One's Te Aniwa Hurihanginui, Maiki Sherman, Jacob Johnson, and to Radio NZ which often just chronicles criticisms of ministerial intentions. Such journalism sends reassuring messages to the lack-lustre lot that believed in Jacinda, Chippy, the Greens and those even nearer the lunatic fringe of politics. The media quibble about what ministers are proposing, blowing them up to headlines criticising policy. “Don’t ban smartphones for school kids”; “Don’t remove urban limits for housing”. Journalists get away with not finding any alternative policies to report, and often don’t even acknowledge there are serious problems in need of fixing. They just let the criticisms do their wicked work.
The current strategic political problem stems from the fact that National Party politicians don’t instinctively think of reform. They are more used to administering the status quo. Right now, they are faced with a slew of problems because a recklessly spending Labour government was convinced that anything could be solved if money was borrowed and thrown at it. So far, National has slowed the wasteful spending juggernaut, but restructuring is another matter. Its two partners in government are less traumatised by the thought of reform, particularly ACT, which was founded on an understanding that significant structural social and economic change is vital if New Zealand is to keep abreast of the world. But convincing National is clearly an uphill task
If the Coalition wants to be re-elected in 2026 it needs a more cohesive approach to pushing ahead with change. David Lange’s government that took office forty years ago this month faced problems of a similar magnitude to those facing the Luxon-led ministry today. Trade unions, the P(D)SA and elements within the Labour Party tried to stop the remedial actions that were taken by Lange’s new cabinet. Roger Douglas, who was Minister of Finance, had been around politics long enough to understand his opponents and decided early in the piece to speed up the reform process. Before long, so many new policies were appearing that opponents didn’t know how to prioritise their attacks. Speed is a key to achieving reform. Occasionally the Lange government suffered from speed wobbles, but as ministers held their nerve and explained what they were doing, and why, new ways of doing things were consolidated. The public bought devaluation and floating of the dollar, the introduction of GST, and the turning of loss-making government trading departments into State Owned Enterprises. A clear overall plan kept the show on the road. Rapid momentum and clear explanations were vital. The government’s share of the vote increased at the following election.
Public divisions between ministers, and hesitations over policy implementation, tell the voting public that something is amiss. Blurting out general intentions without specifics as to policy is also careless. This last week’s announcement that law and order would be a ministerial goal for the next 100 days invited immediate questions about specific policies which Luxon then dived for cover rather than answer. Better to say nothing than start shooting half-cocked
More is needed. The Lange government reformed key parts of the State Services as well. Luxon and Nicola Willis have insisted on some reductions to the bloated bureaucracy they inherited. Civil Servants need to realise that if they continue to play games leaking material and being truculent over policy implementation then further staff retrenchments will occur, and the salaries saved will be put into buying services from consultants. A few fires lit in your critics’ backyards can also be powerful aids to progress. But the process requires determined, consistent leadership, which these days is rather too intermittent to leave me feeling confident that enough reform will be achieved to stop New Zealand’s downward slide.
Historian Dr Michael Bassett, a Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, blogs HERE. - where this article was sourced.
Stinky fish material appeals to many journalists at the New Zealand Herald and to the likes of TV One's Te Aniwa Hurihanginui, Maiki Sherman, Jacob Johnson, and to Radio NZ which often just chronicles criticisms of ministerial intentions. Such journalism sends reassuring messages to the lack-lustre lot that believed in Jacinda, Chippy, the Greens and those even nearer the lunatic fringe of politics. The media quibble about what ministers are proposing, blowing them up to headlines criticising policy. “Don’t ban smartphones for school kids”; “Don’t remove urban limits for housing”. Journalists get away with not finding any alternative policies to report, and often don’t even acknowledge there are serious problems in need of fixing. They just let the criticisms do their wicked work.
The current strategic political problem stems from the fact that National Party politicians don’t instinctively think of reform. They are more used to administering the status quo. Right now, they are faced with a slew of problems because a recklessly spending Labour government was convinced that anything could be solved if money was borrowed and thrown at it. So far, National has slowed the wasteful spending juggernaut, but restructuring is another matter. Its two partners in government are less traumatised by the thought of reform, particularly ACT, which was founded on an understanding that significant structural social and economic change is vital if New Zealand is to keep abreast of the world. But convincing National is clearly an uphill task
If the Coalition wants to be re-elected in 2026 it needs a more cohesive approach to pushing ahead with change. David Lange’s government that took office forty years ago this month faced problems of a similar magnitude to those facing the Luxon-led ministry today. Trade unions, the P(D)SA and elements within the Labour Party tried to stop the remedial actions that were taken by Lange’s new cabinet. Roger Douglas, who was Minister of Finance, had been around politics long enough to understand his opponents and decided early in the piece to speed up the reform process. Before long, so many new policies were appearing that opponents didn’t know how to prioritise their attacks. Speed is a key to achieving reform. Occasionally the Lange government suffered from speed wobbles, but as ministers held their nerve and explained what they were doing, and why, new ways of doing things were consolidated. The public bought devaluation and floating of the dollar, the introduction of GST, and the turning of loss-making government trading departments into State Owned Enterprises. A clear overall plan kept the show on the road. Rapid momentum and clear explanations were vital. The government’s share of the vote increased at the following election.
Public divisions between ministers, and hesitations over policy implementation, tell the voting public that something is amiss. Blurting out general intentions without specifics as to policy is also careless. This last week’s announcement that law and order would be a ministerial goal for the next 100 days invited immediate questions about specific policies which Luxon then dived for cover rather than answer. Better to say nothing than start shooting half-cocked
More is needed. The Lange government reformed key parts of the State Services as well. Luxon and Nicola Willis have insisted on some reductions to the bloated bureaucracy they inherited. Civil Servants need to realise that if they continue to play games leaking material and being truculent over policy implementation then further staff retrenchments will occur, and the salaries saved will be put into buying services from consultants. A few fires lit in your critics’ backyards can also be powerful aids to progress. But the process requires determined, consistent leadership, which these days is rather too intermittent to leave me feeling confident that enough reform will be achieved to stop New Zealand’s downward slide.
Historian Dr Michael Bassett, a Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, blogs HERE. - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
I don’t disagree with MB on the role of MSM bias in undermining the coalition government. But the situation today differs markedly from the 1980s.
Lange’s Labour government was aided in its reforms by the increasing unpopularity of the previous National-led government. There was pent-up frustration, too: In the 1978 and 1981 elections under FPP, National won with less than 40% of the vote and a lower overall share of the vote than Labour – one of the reasons that MMP was later adopted by referendum. Muldoon was regarded by many as a bully and his government as incompetent – with its wage and price freeze, New Zealand started to seem like an east-European communist country.
Contrast this with the 2020s: the Ardern government won in 2020 under MMP with an electoral landslide, whereas in 2023 the coalition government won with a good but not overwhelming majority. Plus, whatever we may feel about the Ardern government – my personal evaluation is that it was grossly incompetent, socially regressive, divisive and ethnicist – I’m sure that most New Zealanders view Ardern very differently from how Muldoon was; Ardern in office genuinely cared about her country and its people, however wrongheaded her administration’s policies were.
The upshot is “going hard and fast” and ignoring dissenting views may have worked (for a time) for Labour in the 1980s, but a different strategy may well be required by the coalition government today. Part of that is making a stronger, positive impact within the MSM.
LFC
There needs to be a mass clean out of woke turds from academia, state-run media, and the public service.
Just what us going to do the clean out?
Who is going to refresh NZ and who will give them the mandate? Who is going to 'fix' things?
Commentators repeatedly say things need to be done but by whom?
If the historical Act Party hard and fast reform was the solution sought by the public then this would show in the polls.
Anyone who believes that Ardern had NZs best interests at heart is extremely naive.
She has her Marxist/ communist doctrine indelibly ingrained and is now trying the same stunt on an equally naive American campus.
"Civil Servants need to realise that if they continue to play games leaking material and being truculent over policy implementation then further staff retrenchments will occur ...".
I somehow doubt it - Yes Minister Series 1 Episode 3 comes to mind, in fact I wonder who our equivalent of Sir Humphrey Appleby is?
"James Hacker : How many people have we got in this department?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Er... in this department? Oh. Very small.
James Hacker : Small? How small?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : I don't know...
James Hacker : 2,000? 3,000?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : [Counts on his fingers] Um. About 23,000 I think, Minister."
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