Mike Hosking: We need to think about the public service differently

Part of the answer to the Rob Campbell scrap is to employ people in the public service differently.

David Seymour says those in the public service are sympathetic to the Government, Ashley Bloomfield says they aren't.

Rob Campbell wants to say whatever he likes as a private person, but still allegedly be neutral when he's a public person.

Maybe part of the problem with the public service is you have to be some sort of robot to simply carry out instruction.

I find it hard to believe you can work for a Government if you genuinely believe what you are being asked to do seems wrong to you.

How many people want to spend all day feeling like they are wasting their time because some minister told them to implement an idea that is either going nowhere or not going to work?

Rob Campbell's appointment was clearly based on his passion for the co-governance type structure of the new health system. He likes it and he wants to see it widespread. So, surely you appoint an advocate of an idea, as opposed to merely a public servant?

In Campbell's case, he came with form. He's an old unionist, he is of the left, he has a record - but that didn’t stop a bunch of companies sticking him on a board - so he clearly has talents elsewhere where political leanings mean little, if anything.

It's fairly clear Adrian Orr would not be appointed by National, but is he considered a leftie? We never thought about that when he ran the Super Fund.

But he is inextricably linked to Grant Robertson and a general view that an astonishing amount of printing was required to fund Covid and, as it turns out, land us in the economic crapper.

Bloomfield you couldn’t pick as left or right, even though a lot of people, including myself, saw him as far too close to Labour and their Covid agenda.

And that’s ultimately the point, isn't it? We will see what we want to see and within all of us is an agenda of sorts.

Surely the large swathes of the media in these past five years are living proof that you can pretend to be neutral until the excitement over a late arrival from Mt Albert sees you swooning just a little bit embarrassingly.

So, instead of a job for life, what about the best person for the job for a public service appointment?

And as the job changes, as it always does with Governments, the same way it does as one chief executive leaves and a new one arrives, you appoint the people most aligned with the thinking, and therefore the greater desire to get it done.

'Yes Minister' and 'Yes Prime Minister' had the reality of the public service worked out - and that was 40 years ago. 

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