Something has gone badly wrong in the public service. From energy policy to financial regulation to education, ministers are too often advised by officials lacking the deep technical background their roles demand.
This chronic loss of subject-matter expertise repeatedly surfaced in consultations for The New Zealand Initiative’s forthcoming report on unscrambling the machinery of government. The consequences are predictable: flawed advice, avoidable errors, and expensive U-turns.
This lack of expertise is not just a matter of a few bad hires. It is built into how the public service now operates – a design feature rather than a flaw.
A telling example came in 2022. The Treasury advertised for a senior analyst to lead its economic strategy team, at “the forefront of economic thought and policy” with “far reaching impacts.” But it then added, almost cheerfully, that “an economics background is not essential.”
Instead, applicants were told to bring “good EQ,” “relationship skills,” and “comfort with ambiguity.” You didn’t need to know economics; you just needed to be a people person.
The job ad caused a brief storm. Under new Treasury Secretary Iain Rennie, it is unlikely to be repeated.
But the advertisement was not an aberration. It was a symptom of a doctrine that “anyone can do anything” in the public service.
This is not a reflection on the many talented people within the public service. Brilliant, dedicated officials work across government departments. But the system increasingly constrains rather than cultivates their potential, training them to become generalists who glide through policy cycles without mastering one.
Much has been said about the public sector’s exploding headcount and declining performance. But these problems may share a common root: deep expertise has been devalued in favour of mobility and breadth.
It was not always like this. In the postwar decades, New Zealand’s “mandarin” public service – a term used admiringly then – was full of specialists. Economists advised Treasury. Regulatory experts advised on regulation. Expertise mattered.
The State Sector Act 1988 sought to strengthen the mandarins’ management capability – an unquestionably sound goal. But this was never intended to come at the expense of technical depth. Done well, the two should reinforce each other. Experts who are capable leaders are better placed to develop and guide expert teams.
Over time, this logic was lost. Being a “well-rounded candidate” became more important than subject matter depth. Switching departments every two years was rewarded. Staying put and developing expertise was not.
Former Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes became synonymous with this generalist model. Hughes did not invent it. But as Commissioner from 2016 to 2023, he perfected it.
Hughes moved public servants like chess pieces – from social development to customs, from corrections to education – building a leadership cadre whose common trait was having worked with him.
In 2020, Hughes’s vision was enshrined in law. The Public Service Act 2020 requires the Commissioner to develop a leadership strategy for “flexible deployment of senior leaders.” It calls for mobility, versatility, and “working across agency boundaries.” In practice, subject expertise is no longer the path to the top.
Dr Simon Chapple, a former public service chief economist, calls this “the rise of the myth of the generic manager” – the notion that anyone with a basic set of management skills can manage any government body. Chapple argues this managerialism has rewarded bureaucratic fluency over technical competence, discouraging investment in deep, organisation-specific skills.
Across the system, generalists now dominate. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment spans an absurd range – from digital payments to energy markets to immigration. No single person at the top could master all these domains.
But the problem runs deeper: the organisation lacks sufficient technical expertise at every level. When complex regulatory decisions arise, there are too few specialists who truly understand the industries they are regulating.
The lack of expertise has consequences. In financial regulation, the CCCFA reforms caused a credit crunch and had to be walked back. In energy, policy has swung between incoherence and overreach.
In each case, industry experts warned of problems. But inside government, no one knew enough – or was confident enough – to push back.
Meanwhile, career public servants succeed by moving frequently. Build a team, lead a restructure, tick the box, move on. A stint in education might lead to a role in primary industries, followed by health or justice. Breadth is rewarded; depth is rare.
This model is not just flawed. It is dangerous. In a world of complex, technical challenges – in digital infrastructure, climate, housing, finance, biosecurity – we need more than process-focused generalists. We need experts.
Other countries are rethinking. Australia and the UK continue to recruit generalists but have formalised specialist career tracks and professional cadres within their public services. They recognise that the best generalists are often former experts – not the other way around.
New Zealand should follow. We must revalue subject matter expertise, rebuild institutional memory, and promote capability and compatibility. And we should write job ads that do not insult the intelligence of the public – or the role.
The Treasury job ad should have been a scandal. Instead, it was a symptom. It is time for a cure.
Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014. This article was sourced HERE
A telling example came in 2022. The Treasury advertised for a senior analyst to lead its economic strategy team, at “the forefront of economic thought and policy” with “far reaching impacts.” But it then added, almost cheerfully, that “an economics background is not essential.”
Instead, applicants were told to bring “good EQ,” “relationship skills,” and “comfort with ambiguity.” You didn’t need to know economics; you just needed to be a people person.
The job ad caused a brief storm. Under new Treasury Secretary Iain Rennie, it is unlikely to be repeated.
But the advertisement was not an aberration. It was a symptom of a doctrine that “anyone can do anything” in the public service.
This is not a reflection on the many talented people within the public service. Brilliant, dedicated officials work across government departments. But the system increasingly constrains rather than cultivates their potential, training them to become generalists who glide through policy cycles without mastering one.
Much has been said about the public sector’s exploding headcount and declining performance. But these problems may share a common root: deep expertise has been devalued in favour of mobility and breadth.
It was not always like this. In the postwar decades, New Zealand’s “mandarin” public service – a term used admiringly then – was full of specialists. Economists advised Treasury. Regulatory experts advised on regulation. Expertise mattered.
The State Sector Act 1988 sought to strengthen the mandarins’ management capability – an unquestionably sound goal. But this was never intended to come at the expense of technical depth. Done well, the two should reinforce each other. Experts who are capable leaders are better placed to develop and guide expert teams.
Over time, this logic was lost. Being a “well-rounded candidate” became more important than subject matter depth. Switching departments every two years was rewarded. Staying put and developing expertise was not.
Former Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes became synonymous with this generalist model. Hughes did not invent it. But as Commissioner from 2016 to 2023, he perfected it.
Hughes moved public servants like chess pieces – from social development to customs, from corrections to education – building a leadership cadre whose common trait was having worked with him.
In 2020, Hughes’s vision was enshrined in law. The Public Service Act 2020 requires the Commissioner to develop a leadership strategy for “flexible deployment of senior leaders.” It calls for mobility, versatility, and “working across agency boundaries.” In practice, subject expertise is no longer the path to the top.
Dr Simon Chapple, a former public service chief economist, calls this “the rise of the myth of the generic manager” – the notion that anyone with a basic set of management skills can manage any government body. Chapple argues this managerialism has rewarded bureaucratic fluency over technical competence, discouraging investment in deep, organisation-specific skills.
Across the system, generalists now dominate. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment spans an absurd range – from digital payments to energy markets to immigration. No single person at the top could master all these domains.
But the problem runs deeper: the organisation lacks sufficient technical expertise at every level. When complex regulatory decisions arise, there are too few specialists who truly understand the industries they are regulating.
The lack of expertise has consequences. In financial regulation, the CCCFA reforms caused a credit crunch and had to be walked back. In energy, policy has swung between incoherence and overreach.
In each case, industry experts warned of problems. But inside government, no one knew enough – or was confident enough – to push back.
Meanwhile, career public servants succeed by moving frequently. Build a team, lead a restructure, tick the box, move on. A stint in education might lead to a role in primary industries, followed by health or justice. Breadth is rewarded; depth is rare.
This model is not just flawed. It is dangerous. In a world of complex, technical challenges – in digital infrastructure, climate, housing, finance, biosecurity – we need more than process-focused generalists. We need experts.
Other countries are rethinking. Australia and the UK continue to recruit generalists but have formalised specialist career tracks and professional cadres within their public services. They recognise that the best generalists are often former experts – not the other way around.
New Zealand should follow. We must revalue subject matter expertise, rebuild institutional memory, and promote capability and compatibility. And we should write job ads that do not insult the intelligence of the public – or the role.
The Treasury job ad should have been a scandal. Instead, it was a symptom. It is time for a cure.
Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014. This article was sourced HERE
12 comments:
Exactly the outcome desired by CRT ( Critical Race Theory) . The public service is one it its 6 key areas of action* - where pushing a specific ideology supersedes competence. In NZ, Maori ideology /supremacy/tribal rule. All is right on track.
* 6 CRT areas - where DIE(diversity, inclusion, equity) must operate : parliament, public service, judiciary, universities, police, media.
To be sure, all of them will be right up there with Te Reo fluency and the karakia/waiata stuff all day, every day. Making sure all the staff make that their priorities too is what gets you ahead.
That's right. Every time you appoint a White male you get yourself in trouble with the DEI doctrine, so you end up having to appoint second-rate wankers on the basis of race and/or sex politics.
Hilarious. Roger Partridge, who is a former Bell Gully lawyer, now semi-retired, gives Finance Minister Willis & PM Luxon endless advice on economics, infrastructure and education (even though he's never taught a course in his life). None of these subjects are remotely related to what he has ever studied, yet he hypocritically laments the rise of the generalist manager. Those generalists in NZ typically take the form of accountants & lawyers, just like Partridge & his Initiative mates, and they pollute our private sector big corporates, as well as public sector. Yes Roger, people with your qualifications have indeed brought NZ to its knees. We're now run by generalist accountants & lawyers, not to mention marketing & comms types like Ardern & Luxon, just like the old Soviet Union was.
Robert - give the guy some credit. He may not be gi-normously experienced in every possible area, but he is expressing some points worth making. We have amassed a vast, expensive public service that basically sucks. I for one would like that to change quick smart. I’m glad Roger is thinking and writing about it and I hope Brian Roche is working really hard to improve it.
Most teachers are so brain -washed into the the indoctrination of our current education system , that they are of little use in making decisions about improvements in education, Robert . Katherine Burbalsinge who has amazing results at her low decile school in London , finds teachers from main stream schools are so incompatible in their teaching methods with her traditionally based but and highly successful school , she can' t use them.
You mean generalist former Coopers & Lybrand accountant Brian Roche - who retired lawyer and NZ Initiative Chair Partridge's mate, namely generalist corporate manager Luxon (who knew nothing about aeronautics but became CEO of Air NZ & bought the wrong planes) appointed State Services Commissioner? And Roche's predecessor, generalist manager Ian Rennie, who was appointed by Luxon to walk across the road in the Depressing Windy City to be Secretary of the NZ Treasury - when there were half a dozen super highly qualified economists - far more impressive - who would have done the job so much better. Do you not know how NZ is (not) working anymore, Anonymous? NZ has become inbred & non-meritocratic. These people and the NZ Initiative are the problem, not the solution. No one has any interest in who knows what anymore, just who knows who in the village. National is as un-meritocratic as Labour on this score. I can't bear going to National Party parties anymore & seeing party President Woods still locked in conversation with former President Goodfellow. Give the country a break. Its like the 19th century. Who's who in the Kings Court. Piss off.
I worked in our Public Sector for 20 years and what I saw was truly horrific.
A Ministry that had to do with Agriculture
I worked at that Ministry from 2000 to 2006. I had been there about four years when we acquired a Team Leader (young woman) and Manager (young man). Both about half the age of the rest of us statisticians or analysts. They were not trained in statistics, but from their first day they went on the offensive. Constant threats, physical intimidation, one act of violence, constant reprimands, constant threats to fire or manage out. Humiliating staff at meetings and ordering disliked staff out of meetings. Deliberately inserting numerous errors into a person's reports and letting those reports go public. Managing out good staff very unfairly.
Later on, both moved around the public service to higher salaries and even to executive teams. I have followed their careers because I know staff at the agencies where they worked after leaving the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Nasty everywhere they have gone and staff managed out or leaving in disgust.
A Government Entity that has to do with Educational Assessment
Numerous staff abused out of employment there. I was in a statistics and qualifications data unit. A middle manager who had no subject matter expertise, and a male Team Leader who had no tertiary qualifications of any kind, abusing very highly qualified but disliked staff out of work. Constant reprimands, instructing other staff not to communicate with those being exited, barring those staff from meetings, numerous false claims of errors in reports etc, claims that certain people did not have the necessary skills and therefore had to be managed out, extremely negative performance reviews followed by letters of warning, taking credit for the work of their staff (plagiarism, in other words), taking the names of staff who had produced various reports and software off those items and inserting their own names. Much verbal abuse but affected staff threatened with dismissal if they tried to complain or take out a personal grievance.
Again, I have followed their careers because I know staff at the Ministry where the female worked subsequently, and I keep up with former colleagues of mine, where the male is still a senior person. Again, nasty everywhere they have gone and staff managed out or leaving in disgust.
In the end it is the CEOs who set these cultures and I know some of them to be bullies from way back. They appoint all kinds of people who should not be there (poorly qualified bullies as middle managers) and order them to fire and bully staff out of employment, though those managers noted above behaved like that of their own accord. Further, these Public Sector organizations spend huge amounts of public money on Non-Disclosure Agreements.
What about overall capability and quality of decision-making at the Executive levels? Why has education gone backwards over the last 20 years?
These behaviours I observed directly. That's why I demanded meetings with the Public Service Association and the Public Service Commission and have written much material on the subject of capability in our Public Service.
David Lillis
Whoa Robert - that’s some rant. It’s obvious you don’t like these people and equally obvious that you have your reasons. It’s a big heavy axe you’re grinding. However, that doesn’t mean everyone has to feel the same way. The world and NZ are far from perfect. Sure, National is not my favourite party. I didn’t vote for them and nor was I excited when Willis appointed Brian Roche - but he’s the guy who’s taken on the task of sorting the public service. It’s a hell of a job. I wouldn’t want it. For all our sakes I hope he’s working hard at it and I hope he can make a difference. You’re free to see those hopes as being in vain, but I’m not about to hope he fails.
My advice really for any parent is to do exactly the opposite of what the Min of Indoctrination (mis and dis Education ) says. The content of sex education , transgenderism agenda as well as DEI objectives indicates they are moral degenerates, and I personally wouldn't have them running even a rat training laboratory. Home school your kid you honestly couldn't do worse . Too many schools are unsafe places full of bullies as well, for decent , courteous children who wish to learn .Similar really to the Ministry, David describes.
An ethno - state does not prosper and move ahead - it stagnates and sinks into a failed state ( once any tax payer money has been squandered and productivity is zero.)
This springs from the mantra that once you have management skills you can manage anything. No longer do you have to have been in the classroom to be a principal, a hospital head to have been in the wards, an engineer to manage a construction firm, and so on. This is common and not confined to the Public Service.
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