Christopher Luxon likely thought he’d thrown Melissa Lee and Penny Simmonds softball portfolios but these two ministers simply weren’t ready for the big leagues.
In demoting them quickly, the Prime Minister is burnishing his Chief Executive of New Zealand persona and letting other members of his Cabinet know there is a standard to meet.
It is a double standard, of course, as the National Party leader can take this kind of decisive action with ministers from his own party but not so easily with those from others.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins was quick to ask why Winston Peters, Shane Jones, and David Seymour hadn’t been given the boot for various near-breaches of the Cabinet manual.
It’s a valid question but the truth about MMP politics is that you can only really fire another party’s minister if you have permission from that party’s leader.
Luxon bravely claimed in a press conference that he as Prime Minister did have the authority to appoint and dismiss any and all ministers. But that is true only in a constitutional sense.
The other problem with axing poor performing ministers is that there is an extremely finite supply of bums to fill the seats around the Cabinet table.
In this case, Climate and Revenue Minister Simon Watts has been elevated to the top table—perhaps he impressed on his week abroad with the PM—but who comes next?
One problem which plagued the previous Labour Government was that it started to run out of ministers. It had a huge crop of newbies after the 2020 election but few with executive talent.
In the private sector, you theoretically can bring in replacements from an extensive pool of talent. In government, you only have those who were voted in at the last election.
Since the National Party won many more electorates than planned, very few of their shoulder-tapped list MPs made it into Parliament.
Melissa Lee, perhaps ironically, was one of the party’s most experienced MPs. She was first elected in 2008 and held ministerial positions under John Key.
She held the media portfolio in opposition for six years but was not ready for the Newshub fallout. Newsroom has reported Cabinet was unimpressed with the quality of her work.
It’s not particularly clear what her replacement, Paul Goldsmith, will be expected to deliver as the Government is obviously not going to step in with subsidies or suddenly find some silver bullets.
News media is economically sensitive and television news has structural challenges related to demographics and technology. Neither of these problems can be legislated away.
In the case of Penny Simmonds, it seems she was simply not across the detail of her disabilities portfolio and was unable to communicate compassionately when it went wrong.
Luxon might expect Louise Upston, who was ranked 10 places ahead of Simmonds on the 2023 party list, will be more capable of watching out for potential landmines in the portfolio.
Besides, Simmonds’ speciality before entering Parliament was tertiary education. One could imagine she was focused on the big reforms in that area and dropped the ball elsewhere.
She also holds the environment portfolio, which would usually be an important job, although under the Coalition Government it has been somewhat sidelined.
Luxon’s decision was designed to keep the wheels of government turning and keep ministers on their toes. But it also sets a high standard that could prove impossible to maintain.
After all, politicians are largely elected based on their door-knocking skills.
47 Comments
Yes, sacking the minister doesn't change the fact the media policy is still sitting on Winston's desk. Apparently it is impossible to email it to him, or hold a zoom conference with him. I don't call that good management, it s simply throwing the blame on someone who had no funding and no backing. I think there is a double meaning on her not a magican comment.
And the disability fiasco, well that is going to happen again and again as cuts bite. But she did handle it badly.
Maybe luxon's under pressure with his low popularity, it might get a bump with this, and his overseas trip.
Probably similar to the explosion in NDIS costs the Australian Govt is dealing with across the ditch. Then again, when disability funding includes funding sex workers, how can you be surprised? I would suggest a deep dive in to what is being funded under the guise of "disability" is required here as well.
Might be an area where we can judge the level of a civilisation, to what degree we help alleviate the suffering of those unfortunate most often through no fault of their own. Vs. whether we prioritise - for example - borrowing on the taxpayer to fund tax cuts for value-taking property speculators.
Correction the ministry never got the funds it had budgeted for in the first place. Labour intentionally never funded the ministry to the known allocated care budgets. So yes there are very real cuts in place now so that also means loss of wheelchair and powerchair support services as well as loss of access to get to GPs and loss of funding for legally required staff renumeration for travel expenses they incur as part of their job which translates to a loss of staff.
Here is a clue when you underfund the total allocated amount you have effectively cut the amount of funding available. If you need to pay $10 and you only have funded $6 then there is a $4 difference you are cutting out. Basic maths. But sure repeat the tagline no cuts because the ministry is trying to repeat a media tagline that is as BS as the original accountants in that ministry who knew at the start of last years budget sht would hit the fan.
They knew they had not had the funding in last years budget and would need to cut the funding for essential medical services. But only some of the public get access to public healthcare eh. Politicians and department heads get to the front of the queue with full funded medical care.
You know, and I know this is a generalisation, but you could argue that much of the inefficiencies and unaccountability of our public service has arisen since there was a discernible shift in culture from dedicated to providing service(s) to instead one of changing the way people behave. Does that in turn provide a clue as to why so more of them have become necessary, particularly in the last six years?
Except you have to go through 3 levels of interviews, (medical &OT assessment) to get approval for the money and it is a set fixed amount for the whole year. It is not flexible, it does not change easily. Even for fast degenerative diseases when you could be walking one year and in a wheelchair unable to stand or be upright safely the next (so you could be left without any change to funding or support like equipment for years). For most disabled families getting to the 2nd level of interviews can take 6mths to a year, and most disabled people do not get their required annual review until they push for it real hard through 3 medical services. So the funding allocated annually DID NOT CHANGE. We did not have a sudden outbreak of genetic disease or birth injuries not covered by ACC, nor did we suddenly find thousands of disabled people hidden under a rock who have never had contact with the health system.
You cannot overspend a fixed allocated amount. However when the fixed allocated amount is not fully budgeted for the ministry at all which OIA releases openly admit was a failure of the last government then you will face cuts to the amounts of the fixed allocated amount available to be spent. The officious ministry way of doing this is by cutting the essential "respite" care so it cannot be used for providing respite services, i.e. cutting existing respite arrangements, cutting transport to medical services, cutting adequate medically required leave & replacement for primary carers, cutting transport for respite services, cutting materials and tools needed for respite. That funding is roughly half the essential medical care for many, e.g. cutting food prep and cooked food away from disabled people. cutting access to GPs, cutting provision for carers medical leave etc.
Imagine never being able to have time off to sleep 3 hours at a time, go home, have a sick day, have annual leave, have public holidays and work in physically demanding roles.
In the background the govt dept spent millions on top fighting families through court so those providing nursing services etc do not deserve minimum employment rights when engaged by the ministry to provide them. Hence this legal case plus the cutting of funding for essential allocated budgets is a 2 step process to cut services altogether, leading people back into group and institutional housing when the wheels fall off and carers die or quit.
The ironic thing is no one ever could use the funds for alcohol or lotto tickets because the funds are approved for release with a submitted invoice. If you needed a carer to travel to hospital specialist services though you legally as an employer need to fund their travel and food costs in the transit (where applicable and to a reasonable amount). You have to pay without any funding of it then collect the receipts and the invoices and then submit them to be reimbursed. Perhaps the ministry thought the lunch or dinner at the airport or hotel restaurant bar qualified as solely "alcohol" or perhaps they misread the labels for sterilizing alcohol. Sterilizing alcohol is something many disabled families often need in bulk as part of the employment materials cost for essential maintenance nurses do for equipment and medical tools, tubing, scalpels (the bulk supplier for scalpels is really good) etc. Since the ministry does not account for annual leave, holiday pay, materials and tools of nursing services, transport as part of the job (IRD suggests rate of 0.95per km if the nurse/ respite worker is using their vehicle) etc but as employer this is legally required this additionally cuts into the allocated hours of respite funded.
6 months in and teething problems. It is a bit of a different ball game though. It has taken quite a while for the NZ electorate to return a true MMP government. Up until now it has been little more than either of the two established main parties and an add on or two. 2023 delivered two coalition partners of sizeable representation. The point above is pertinent. Political parties can no longer rely on the list to shuffle in MPs that are deemed of the requisite potential. That may in future revert to a better calibre of candidates in the electorate which would do no harm. The new MP for Rangitata is clearly a good example of such improvement.
Hey Foxy ! ... how're you keeping , bro ? .... what a refreshing change to have a PM who insists on people being held accountable for their actions ...
... a far cry from the previous regime who threw out all KPI's , insisting that we just needed to be kind , and pop Teddy Bears in our windows ... are we surprised that crime stats soared , that truancy from school became epidemic , that vaping rocketed , that waiting times in hospital emergency departments climbed exponentially , that the public service ballooned to bloated Mr Creosote proportions ...
... how quickly the MSM have glossed over far & away the worst government & PMs ever (Ardern & Hipkins) , and are currently kicking the snot out of a mildly competent Luxon & his coalition !
A PM who insists on holding people accountable.... yeah if only Ardern sacked Iain Lees-Galloway for the affair with his staffer, or stood down Meka Whaitiri for assaulting one of hers, or removed Clare Curran from cabinet for not disclosing that meeting she set up on her personal email, or demoted David Clark after breaching his own lockdown rules, or fired Stuart Nash after discussing confidential cabinet papers with donors. Yes, it is so refreshing to FINALLY have a PM who holds people accountable!
GBH - welcome back! The record of the last lot as you identify is on record. The electorate in 2023 demonstrated what they thought about it. The most heavily defeated government in terms of lost representation in near to 100 years. NZ has now a coalition government in true MMP format so in some respect, uncharted waters. This lot though would need to be the worst government NZ has ever had to be worse than the last lot in their last term at the least.
Before you can build something, you first need to stabilise the ground it will be built on. There are far more urgent priorities at present to stabilise things before they collapse further. And fixing Education and Immigration is a start on building the economy. When you take care of the pennies, the pounds take care of themselves.
I hope they do put some real investment into improving education. That we've had large class sizes and shared class spaces because we've underfunded teaching and skimped on building enough classrooms is a shocking indictment on multiple successive governments. Education is an investment in the future of the country, despite what recent rises in anti-intellectualism might claim.
I'd like to reply to Officebound who questionned "Is this empathy from Yvil?" in the previous article about demoting Melissa Lee, when I said "I know Melissa personally, and I feel sorry for her"
Yes, I'm empathetic towards people I know and therefore care about. On the other hand, my empathy towards unknown posters hiding behind a moniker is admittedly very limited.
I knew her too. It was hilarious she got the position she did considering she actually openly crowed about her music piracy. Neither of the two ministers were suitable for those roles and they were out of their depth. However that being the case they were not worse then the last two in their position so hopefully they will find roles they are better suited for. In retrospect perhaps they needed to be better matched to portfolios depending on their experience... their experience however did not engender confidence but that is a factor of all politicians, not this govt, not this party but all of them. Sink or swim we have to live with those who want to be politicians in our society. If only they had meaningless busywork to occupy them instead.
Hey, I don't need your empathy thanks.
My comment wasn't about your empathy to others in these comment threads.
I simply have an impression of you that you haven't displayed empathy to anyone (aka the rest of society) in previous comments.
I've read a lot of your comments, and the lasting impression has been a lack of a sense of empathy for anyone (except now people you know personally), thus my comment.
Do you care about the people who are poorest in society? If so, any old comments you can share that reflect this, or is my impression reasonable?
Hard to hold them accountable when they're apparently fudging / failing to declare the relevant stats - eg Ministry for Children
LINDSAY MITCHELL: Is Oranga Tamariki guilty of neglect? (bassettbrashandhide.com)
Considering 87% of the children OT interacts with have significant disabilities it is highly confusing why there are no multiple disability & accessibility advisors and community outreach managers in OT for connecting to disability orgs, disability cultures (e.g. deaf cultural & education advisors etc) & medical specialists. But I guess 87% of the children just are not a significant number enough to care about when we have much lower numbers of children that do matter more.
Of the percent employed by OT less than 2% have understanding & experience of disability, so yeah things are never going to improve if they think they need representation to make a change, especially when disabled people number 25% of the population and OT cannot even break 5% of staff with even a basic understanding.
Around 50% of disabled youth are not in education or employment. Over 50% of disabled people cannot access work income. It is still legal to pay disabled people $3 an hour, because the minimum wage law does not apply to them in the same way.
Look at how little disability services are available in education or health. Most the parents with kids with FASD, or ASD get no support early on and these are kids that require a lot of fulltime work, not part time or daycare. Kids with other disabilities often need access to services or schools that is not there presently. In fact most the kids excluded from daycare and schools are the children with disabilities even though they are not the ones causing fights. It is often an automatic denial. We don't have the facilities for your child, we cannot safely ensure your child stays in school, we don't have the class resources/teaching resources/resources for necessary building upgrades etc. ORS funding is a nightmare most parents would not be able to access when needed.
Hence many of the neurodiverse kids are prone to escaping and running on the roads. OT callouts for kids not in school or daycare regularly, prone to outbursts when they are poorly supported with few language skills taught, would need fulltime monitoring (pushing even well paid parents into destitution when one has to give up work and the other has to take time as well), it is not surprising.
Those children grow up to be adults & parents who are far more represented in intimate partner violence stats as victims and being victims of crime. The rates of abuse against disabled partners is far higher then that for non disabled. That is ministry of justice and support org studies by the way. Now many disabled partners will have children (both non disabled, disabled but poorly diagnosed with limited access to medical services and disabled diagnosed) but when they are receiving less support (because the support available to non disabled people is less accessible to disabled parents - more ministry of health, ministry of justice and victim support org studies) then yes they are unsupported, more likely to experience violence, less able to escape violent relationships with no income etc and yeah OT gets involved.
The ministry had done reviews on their staffing levels and they do discriminate against disabled people for employment. Unless it is gradual degeneration while you are in employment, your chances of employment in a govt department with a disability (even the ministry of disabilities lol) is worse then 1/100. The ministry will prejudge and limit roles to those who have full transport access, who have no visible disabilities, who can get access into office spaces and homes (less then 98% are accessible), and who already have prior experience with other work (which multiplies the level of discrimination & bias as expecting one org to hire someone visibly disabled can be slim to none, expecting more then one is a joke).
Hence the phrase it is mainly people with disabilities who hire those with disabilities. The level of bias in employment hiring processes is exceptional. Especially in govt roles that mandate office work instead of WFH. Hence during lockdown disability employment improved but after when the in office mandates came back it stalled (and govt depts were the most in favor of having in office mandates instead of more flexible companies that use WFH/remote for most work e.g. work with international clients).
In most govt departments the most likely disability hire (that is not degeneration) is dyslexics, a "disability" in the slightest definition of the word in that it has absolutely no physical disabling barriers faced and no major learning, no social and no behavioural barriers faced. In education it can be 'cured' with the use of spell and grammar checks or even a basic proof read. So no real disability at all (using the rights based model). Yet most people are advised openly to never ever disclose disability in the hiring process. It is real easy to understand why when you interact with recruiting company staff often.
Having spent a large part of my career working in large corporates it’s refreshing to see Luxton treating govt the same way and making these calls.
Essentially we the tax payers are like shareholders and as a shareholder we expect those who are underperforming or not a good fit for the role to be moved on.
It is said the Roman nobility considered itself so superior that if another race should ever consider themselves as being denigrated, they actually had no grounds for that because they should just be grateful that they had been mentioned in the first place. Perhaps the Race Relations Commissioner is thus attuned?
I’m female and while I don’t want to denigrate any other women’s personal journey and the bias they may have experienced, personally I don’t get aggrieved at every decision made and think it’s because of my gender. To be honest, my gender has not influenced anything I’ve wanted to do with my life. I’ve gone for it..and accepted that at times I may not have been up to the task at hand. From where I stand the TPM slant/ narrative today is totally politically motivated and the bias against Luxon and his colleagues shows the statement for what it is. Using women to have a dig at Luxon is distasteful.
Give it to TPM to actually advocate for people who abuse the community and do more harm to the vulnerable they are meant to represent. If it was a minister claiming Maori don't deserve public health services because they will instead just buy drugs, alcohol and lotto tickets I am sure they would have a different tune.
But TPM are highly discriminatory and practice unhealthy exclusion of disabled people. Hence the fact that during their time the life expectancy for disabled people went down another decade. Because far be it for TPM to recognize disabled people as also deserving of equitable rights. Nah TPM are exactly like the pigs in Animal Farm. Some animals are more equal then others. Hence TPM push on OT on Maori roles but no disability advocacy ones because 87% of OT kids just do not matter enough to TPM to have equitable safe upbringing.
Lets not fool ourselves TPM act against the interests of vulnerable Maori and lead to the death of Maori family members and friends. They are shameful, manipulative, arrogant, selfish, harmful and greedy much like the Animal Farm pigs. They would see most the vulnerable in the community sent off to the glue factories for more trauma and death.
TPM are far closer to the far right, in their practices, then even they realize.
Imagine having actual standards for Ministers? Such a novel idea.
Of course, could just follow Labour and the Greens and wait for things to blow up completely before shifting portfolios. How many times did Chris Hipkins and Megan Woods get assigned new portfolios due to the incompetence of their fellow MPs?
It is far better then the last govt that kept ministers that actively breached the law and UN human rights against torture in positions. It is actually an improvement to see ministers that go into a role (that literally none of the entire govt have the skills for, including the opposition) and then get moved on when they screw up so badly literally anyone with the same skill level or less would do a better job.
Considering no politician is suitable for the ministries they manage how would you evaluate who should go into which role when many of politicians are highly inexperienced and not well read in any of them. Picking names out of a hat might have even worked better because the bias around the roles and potential for corrupt favoritism would be less. It seems more a statement of who can better manage public image with the less visible ministries getting the b and c level actors.
In one hand I can think of politicians who had experience for the roles they got put into and that is mostly because they studied in policy & legal jobs and got put into a policy dept that circulates reports that go nowhere.
Considering the massive financial blowout of the past 3 years (going mostly to useless things and increasing the wealth divide) that wiped much of the financial safety net we had as a country we literally are facing a future of not enough funds for essential needs while we continue to carry more unnecessary and wasteful bureaucracy. The funding & staffing of many ministries and advisory committees is pretty bad for starters yet none of those in policy development & management are taking significant haircuts. Hence them pushing the buck down the line in healthcare & education rather then addressing the bloat and wasted spending we had at top. We literally have organizations e.g. MHF that use the success of other orgs work (done without any support or interaction with MHF) as a measure that MHF must have improved things by existing and draining most the funding that is not going to the orgs doing actual frontline work.
Another example the ministry for disabilities spent more than 2billion on back office while they helped no one but they also paid out public funds on top of that to setup middle man companies that did nothing more then forward documents from patients to the office. When you can create an industry out of thin air that does nothing more then effectively email & form forwarding there is a lot of waste right there. Yet instead of the top office roles in those orgs going nah lets just cut frontline services. It is the same in health and other ministries.
Far be it for dept managers and heads to take paycuts.
Hence many disabled communities actually feel the ministry for them is wasted paper pushing paychecks designed to discriminate against disabled people, staffed by useless and poorly educated "policy" writers with no clue or experience of disability. It was better when they were honest and we wasted less money when it was part of HNZ. If it is just more of the same people with lack of experience in what their ministry is meant to advocate for and work on why bother having them there. They do not even do the bare minimum of "promoting visibility" in fact they have done more to silence and condemn the community they exist for. The ministry for disabilities has done more to harm the disabled community then anything else. NZ wasted 2billion on rotten lemons that causes food poisoning and then you have to keep them around to rot further and pay for it to be stored. Why bother with the rotten stock, just compost it and lets get better lemons we can digest, most of which are available & working for free right now, instead of wasting money on something we cannot eat. While not spend that money on the frontline services instead. Why did they need more then 16 layers of management for a form to pass through (with no review, edits or checks) before it is processed. A web service API call can do the same thing and you don't need office space for that or managerial level paychecks.
Why do we have to waste funds on a ministry that does more harm to its sector and acts in such bad faith. They are more then wasted space they are actual luddites trying to use public funds to harm the public. Just get rid of the lot of them and we save money immediately. If the ministry was just made up of 5 people and a website you would not notice any difference and the representation of the community would actually improve (even though it would still be just 1 person, who was getting ACC payouts instead of being left to disability sector funding so they had no experience of disability issues that affects most the sector).
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