Nicola Willis: Minister of Finance and Public Service on Government directive to prioritise public services on basis of need

The Government has issued a directive to all central Government organisations, to prioritise public services on the basis of need rather than ethnicity or other forms of personal identity. 

Government contracts will also be awarded on the basis of public value, removing the previous Government’s target for 8% of Government agencies annual contracts to be awarded to Māori businesses. 

Minister of Finance and Public Service Nicola Willis tells Heather du Plessis-Allan real analytical rigour is needed for services that want to target specifically based on personal identity. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Afternoon, Cabinet has finally ordered government agencies to stop prioritizing
public services on the basis of race and instead focus
on need. Government contracts should also be awarded on the
basis of public value, not on where the businesses are
mildly owned, like the last government had ordered. Nikola Willis
is the Public Service Minister with us.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Now, Hey, Nikolin, good veening, how are you heaving?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Very well? Thank you? So does this mean we're going
to get no more stuff at all, like the GP
visits and hawks Bay being free based on.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Race, Well, we think it's really important that services aren't
arbitrarily allocated on the basis of personal identity, including ethnic identity.
What we're not saying is that you would never be
able to do that. But if you're going to do that,
you've got to have some real analytical regular that outlines

(00:47):
why that is the best way to target that service,
because most of the time that's just an actual assumption
or a proxy, whereas the actual need might be more
that that. There are people who aren't accessing the healthcare.
This is because of their housing, because of where they live,
the couse of their low income, because of a range
of other factors, and you're much better to be analytical

(01:08):
and rigorous because that allows for the best use of resource.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
How confident are you that the public service is actually
going to follow this instruction?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, this is a binding instruction for the public service,
and I know that they take their professional responsibility seriously.
We've gone to great care with the circular. David Seymour
and I worked hard on it to make sure that
it gives really clear directions so that when misters identify
things in their portfolios that they have questioned about, they

(01:38):
can go back to the circular and say to their agency, well,
how do you justify this according to the Cabinet circular?
Show me your analytical framework, Show me how you step
through the circular to make sense of this. So yeah,
I think it's going to make a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Do you have any idea what value of government contracts
were awarded to Maori businesses because they were Maori businesses
under that labor rule. Ah?

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, it had got to just over eight percent, which
I understand was about three thousand contracts. Now, what I'd
like to say about that is I expect that Marty
businesses will continue to before and win government contracts and
they'll do so on the basis of the value that
they deliver in the community. The problem with the target

(02:20):
was that it led to a perception among many people
who were bidding for government contracts that they weren't a
level playing field and that one business would get favored
over another on the basis that it was defined as
a marty business. We want one in contracts because they're
the best people for the job, Nicholas.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Things like this get dropped on a Friday because you
don't want to get too much attention. Are you guys
doing this on a Friday because you're actually ashamed of it?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
No? No, I've just had a very busy week as
the rest of the cabinet. This is an announcement that
we wanted to make. We've agreed it, We've got it
out there. David spoken about it today. I've spoken about
it today.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Very heavy to keeping Nan. Give your time talking again
on Monday. That's Nicola Willis, Public Service Minister and Finance
Minister of course with us every Monday after six o'clock.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
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