'Political neutrality' has never been more dead

Hi!

It's been months since I've written anything outside of my day job. I've had a lot going on this year and, if to be honest, I've gotten rusty. I feel like I've retired to a cabin upstate where I live a reclusive lifestyle helping rescue chinchillas get their shit together. But, if you'll allow me to continue the metaphor, there's a helicopter landing in the clearing where I chop wood and I just know whoever's piloting the damn thing wants me back in the game.

When I quit the public service a couple of years ago, one of the biggest 'push factors' was the way the concept of 'political neutrality' was being misapplied. The concept is defined by the Public Service Commission as:

Political neutrality is about serving New Zealand’s democratically elected government to the best of our professional abilities, irrespective of our own personal political opinions.

Problematically, the Senior Leadership Teams of many government departments don't take this kind of thing very seriously. What's more, their 'personal political opinions' have a degree of uniformity. Whether or not they personally vote for National / ACT / NZ First, most have internalised many of the more superstitious tenants of neoliberalism and hold a basic distrust of devolving power to communities, especially Māori. There are certainly a number of high profile public servants who belong to hard-right evangelical Christian Churches but the mean political position of a senior public servant in New Zealand is closer to Singapore's People's Action Party: technocratic, anti-democratic and 'small-c' conservative.

In practice, this means that they have been better at modelling the detatched ideal of 'political neutrality' when there's been a Labour government in power.

What I saw from the inside of the public service during the first year of Luxon's government was Senior Leaders taking editorial control of written advice to ensure it only included substance that would be inoffensive to Ministers. This included the removal of Te Reo Māori and Te Tiriti analysis and the increased withholding of information under the Official Information Act. The kind of stuff that's coming out now at MoE will seem familiar to many people across the sector. This widespread dismissal of the concept of 'free and frank' advice differs from department to department and, credit where credit's due, I've seen some refreshingly strong advice from less obsequious departments (e.g. MFAT's advice to Winston Peters on the recognition of Palestine).

Looking from the outside-in, it looks to me like this problem has only gotten worse over the current political term.

In October 2024, Brian 'Mr Fixit' Roche was annointed Public Service Commissioner. A professional board member, Roche has overseen widespread job cuts at the behest of the Coalition. Through redundancies and the attrition of those who couldn't stomach the professional humiliation of non-existent standards, the result has been a public service that has been smaller, less competent, further right and increasingly reliant on generative AI.

The role of the Public Service Commissioner is ostensibly to promote "integrity, political neutrality, and good conduct, preserving public trust and confidence." Despite this, Roche's record has been anything but politically neutral and has been characterised by ridiculous moves like using taxpayers' money to run ads critical of the union and calling for fewer departments. In my opinion, the most pathetic example of his despotism came a few weeks ago when he warned public servants not to participate in Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori due to his belief that celebrating the Indigenous language of Aotearoa was untenably political. When I attended the hīkoi, there were far fewer public servants than there had been in the past.

This is the logical endpoint of the trend that I saw accelerate in 2024. Things that were uncontroversial back then are being relitigated as our government drags our country to the right. It's hard enough for kaimahi Māori to work for the Crown at the best of times, imagine what it's like when something as normal as speaking your own language is seen as an attack on the government. It's an open secret that public servants who are queer or Palestinian are being pressured into hiding their identities at work.

Given all of the above, I wasn't surprised when I read the recent coverage that the head of DPMC is engaged to a National Party candidate. Of course he is! We are living in a country where government cheerleaders are managing the decline of our dwindling public services.

Our public services are rotten to the core and they're only getting more rotten. If we get a favourable election result this year, the incoming government is going to need to meaningfully clean-up shop. In the meantime, if you're left in the sector or you work for the PSA, please keep fighting tooth and nail against the right-wing politicisation, normalisation of anti-Māori policy, retreat from the regions to Wellington, cognitive offloading and grovelling leadership.

Have some honour.

End the ritual humiliation.

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