Roger Partridge: The Hidden Architecture of Government Failure

Bad incentives, not bad people, keep breaking New Zealand’s institutions – and only structural change will fix them.

New Zealand has never spent more on public services, administered by a workforce that has grown by a third in less than a decade. And yet hospital waiting lists stretch into years, students leave school unable to read, and infrastructure crumbles.

More money. More people. Worse results. If resources are not the problem, what is?

John McLean: My last fandango in an official information act fiasco

A case study in the breakdown of public transparency and accountability in New Zealand

This Substack has its genesis a decade ago. From 2015 to 2017, Fonterra deliberately cooked its financial books in order to hide bad investments and artificially inflate its net worth and share price. These shifty shenanigans, in which Fonterra’s auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers were complicit, meant that dairy farmers who purchased their mandatory Fonterra shares over this period did so at inflated prices. More particularly, the book cooking significantly boosted the already astronomical pay of Dutch Fonterra CEO Theo Spierings, whose bonuses were significantly based on Fonterra’s share price,.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Jacinda, Grant, Chippy and Ayesha can't prevent accountability

I think what many of us are experiencing right now, re: Jacinda, Grant, Chippy and Ayesha not fronting publicly for the COVID inquiry is not disappointment, because disappointment requires us to have had a higher expectation of them.

And I don't think that we did, because I think we got the measure of these people a long time ago.

Brian Easton: Accountability And Archives New Zealand

Was another IT debacle inevitable given the management arrangements?

In February 20022, Archives New Zealand (ANZ) switched its electronic access to the nation’s public records from ‘Archway’ to the new Collections system, also known as ‘AIMS’ (Archives Integrated Management System). There was immediate outrage by users. As Archives New Zealand politely said: ‘Ongoing issues with poor functionality, bugs, and unplanned disruptions in service caused increasing levels of dissatisfaction from users and government agencies.’

Mike Hosking: When will this Govt actually accept accountability?

Accountability is one of the most important attributes of leadership.

If you have a mandate to make decisions, then they must be defended and the decision maker must be held to account.

This Government doesn’t want to be held to account.

The Aged Care Association wrote to the Health Minister. Their warning was that the industry was on the verge of collapse.

The job gaps are so great it’s now dangerous.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Forget About COVID, They Say

Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with COVID.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years.

There are two ways to be over COVID.

One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: Declare the war won and move on. For political reasons.

Deaths attributed to COVID nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year. But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail.

Roger Childs: A Royal Commission should investigate the White Island tragedy

It’s now a year on from the disaster which killed 22 people in the Bay of Plenty, mainly Australians. The governor-general, prime minister and other dignitaries were there for the recent anniversary and took the usual photo opportunities. There was a lot of grief and sorrow, but I didn’t hear White Island Tours giving an apology.

 Last year’s catastrophe was an accident waiting to happen and it appears that because of the blasé attitude and greed of the tour company, lives were lost. Most people would have expected a Royal Commission to investigate the tragedy as happened with the Pike River Mine disaster and the shootings at the Christchurch mosques. Instead the government workplace regulator WorkSafe carried out an inquiry and last week decided to prosecute – 10 organisations and 5 individuals – seemingly anyone who had anything to do with the tragic events in the Bay of Plenty in December 2019. However Work Safe did not include themselves!

This scattergun approach to assigning culpability may have been intended to soften the blow for the chief culprits: the Ngati Awa tour operators.

Clive Bibby: Apologies are not the same as a meaningful response

The crocodile tears are becoming a flood.

Politicians around the world are notorious for apportioning blame after the publication of damning reports that highlight failures of leadership under their watch as long as the number of those who might lose their jobs doesn't include themselves.

Even our own country has a shameful record of senior ministers being slapped on the wrist before, after the mandatory stand down, being readmitted to the cabinet clique on full pay. "Welcome back! Have a good break?"

Karl du Fresne: New Zealand's accountability deficit

When did you last hear of a judge resigning because honour demanded it, or to atone for a catastrophic error?

The most recent example I can think of is former District Court judge Robert Hesketh, who did the honourable thing by quitting in 1997 after pleading guilty to charges arising from fraudulent expense claims.

His fellow judge Martin Beattie faced similar charges but chose to fight them and was acquitted.