I saw this morning this chart in a tweet from a Canadian economics professor (prompted by the new ministerial appointments in Canada).
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I was digging around in the list of former New Zealand Ministers of Finance anyway, and thought it might be interesting to try a New Zealand version. Responsible government here goes back to 1856 and so I dug out the previous occupations of those who have held the office of Minister of Finance (or Colonial Treasurer or Treasurer) since then. The list has 42 names (although several held the office on several separate occasions – Ward being the most recent to have been Minister of Finance four separate times, the last ending in 1930). Canada, reading from the chart above, appears to have had 43 federal Ministers of Finance since 1867.
Of our 43, 7 held office for less than six months (some of those early governments lasted for days or mere weeks). I could have excluded them from the chart below, but it doesn’t look as though doing so would materially alter the picture (although it would mean dropping our one engineer – Charles Brown (1856) – and the one builder (William Hall-Jones (1906)).
When you sometimes hear breathless cries of how awful it was that Muldoon served as his own Minister of Finance while being Prime Minister you realise how little New Zealand history people know. In addition to Muldoon, the following served as Minister of Finance and Prime Minister at the same time (some on more than one occasion): Stafford, Vogel, Atkinson, Grey, Ballance, Seddon, Hall-Jones, Ward, Massey, Forbes, and Holland. You’d have to guess it won’t happen again, but it simply hadn’t been uncommon in New Zealand (and that in the days before legions of Associate Ministers).
So, to the chart. In most cases it is pretty clear how to classify people (Tizard was a teacher, Muldoon and Douglas were accountants, Richardson was a lawyer), but not always. I’ve shown both Grant Robertson and Nicola Willis as political staffers, but Robertson had also been a public servant and Willis a lobbyist.
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The chart is very different from the Canadian version. Farmers still top the chart, although the last farmer to have been Minister of Finance was Gordon Coates who left office in 1935 (yes, I know Bill English has some claims but by the look of it he spent about a year on the family farm before going into politics).
As for the “business” category it is also a little arbitrary: Seddon (publican), Birch (surveyor) and the architect and builder each had their own firms – as in fact for a time had Walter Nash, although I’ve classified him as a political administrator in respect of his long service as secretary of the Labour Party. And in case you are wondering about the civil servants, that list is Bill English and a number of colonial administrators, including one of the eminence of George Grey.
Unlike Canada, no economists have held the office. I have no reason to think that a bad thing – I’m wary of, for example, doctors as Minister of Health – although no doubt Don Brash once aspired to it, and perhaps Dan Bidois (Parliament’s one current economist) does now? And it is worth bearing in mind that once upon a time incomes per head here were well above those in Canada, and now they lag behind (and Canada itself has a pretty woeful productivity record).
[UPDATE: Since I have been contacted on this point by a few people, I should note that I am aware that Brooke Van Velden has a degree majoring in economics. However, at least as I understand it, she has never worked as an economist – which is not a criticism of course – and on leaving university worked for the political PR firm Exceltium. Bidois, on the other hand, worked as an economist at OECD for several years.]
Anyway, I’m a history and politics junkie and I found it interesting. I hope some of you did. For the real nerds here is the full table
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Michael Reddell spent most of his career at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, where he was heavily involved with monetary policy formulation, and in financial markets and financial regulatory policy, serving for a time as Head of Financial Markets. Michael blogs at Croaking Cassandra - where this article was sourced.
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