Olivia O’Malley is a former press secretary to New Zealand’s Leader of the Opposition and long-time Conservative staffer. She currently works in public affairs.
The potential appointment of Sue Gray as Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff has ruffled feathers in Westminster and Whitehall.
Both civil servants and politicians have questioned whether the move is an appropriate one – and whether it is possible to be in talks with the Labour Party while deliberating on the future of Conservative politicians. What it is likely to come down to is who knew what and when.
But the UK is not the only country to be grappling with what impartiality means. New Zealand is in the midst of its very own controversy.
As a follower of the Westminster system of government, New Zealand also requires its public servants to be impartial. Until recently, this has not been in question.
But as I’ve written before, proposals to enshrine co-governance with Māori iwi (tribes) have caused disquiet in some circles. Chief among the critics have been the Opposition, the National Party and the ACT Party.
Issues of race relations have long ignited fierce debate. In 2005, responding to controversy over ownership of New Zealand’s foreshore and seabed, then-National leader Sir Don Brash (who subsequently served as a leader of ACT) kicked off an election campaign with a billboard starkly depicting “Iwi” on one side, in Labour red, and “Kiwi” on the other, in National blue.
Brash lost the election. But the recent debate on co-governance has caused many of the same issues to be thrown around, and National’s approach has been criticised in some political circles.
Just last week, Rob Campbell, chair of both Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand and the Environmental Protection Agency, was forced to resign over a LinkedIn post in which he scathingly attacked the National Party’s position on co-governance. He called its proposals “a thin disguise to the dog whistle”.
Campbell did not go quietly, penning an op-ed for national news outlet Stuff slamming the culture of “PyongPoneke” (Poneke is Māori for Wellington). He has argued that engaging with political topics in public, even when that extends to criticising party policy, does not compromise his impartiality.
Since then, two further public servants have come under scrutiny.
Steve Maharey, a former Labour minister and current Chair of Pharmac, Education New Zealand and the ACC, has been criticised for columns critical of National, while Ruth Dyson, a fellow former Labour MP, is now subject to a probe on her social media postings. Her Twitter bio describes her as “still Labour”, which she has argued is compatible with her role as Deputy Chair of Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
New Zealand’s revolving door between politics and the civil service is even stronger than in the UK. Inevitably, a small talent pool (Wellington has a population of around 220,000, in a country of only five million) means everyone knows everyone, and the smooth running of things is highly dependent on trust.
Former Stuff political journalist Henry Cooke recently wrote on Substack that New Zealand remains subscribed to the “good chaps” theory of government that is also prevalent in the UK.
Yet if ACOBA is considered toothless, it’s worth noting that New Zealand has no analogous processes to examine where former ministers go when they leave government.
Last year Kris Faafoi, a minister, left Parliament. Less than three months later, he had set up a new lobbying firm. This was contentious, not least because Faafoi would have been privy to Cabinet discussions on issues on which he is now seeking to lobby his former colleagues. But it was within the rules, because there are none.
Moreover, lobbying as a whole is largely unregulated: there is no centralised register, and gaining access to Parliament is even easier than in the UK. The main safeguard against bad behaviour is that Wellington is a bubble, and nothing stays secret for long.
While Kiwi civil servants are governed by a Code of Conduct – which Campbell disagrees that he broke – and the Public Service Commissioner has said he will look at the public postings of office-holders on a case by case basis, it’s not unusual for those working in government departments to also be active members of political parties at a level the UK simply does not allow.
On some level, it’s surprising it has taken this long for public servants to be properly scrutinised for their social media use – and even then, the Public Service Commissioner has resisted calls for a full audit.
But greater oversight is ultimately needed. Trust in politics has eroded in recent years, though not to the depths seen here in the UK. Without greater oversight, questions of impartiality and due process will only grow louder.