Dr Blaschke, Olsen and Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich will discuss the report with Deb Te Kawa at a 2 pm webinar today. Register here. 

Whichever government emerges from this month’s election cannot assume the public service will help it deliver on its promises, according to a new report from The New Zealand Initiative.
 
This report tests whether officials wholeheartedly help the government of the day succeed, whoever it is, and give ministers the honest advice they need. Authors Dr Benno Blaschke and Henry Olsen surveyed 718 current and former public servants and interviewed 40 people with direct experience of the system.
 
Voters elect ministers, but unelected officials turn their promises into action. Yet seven in ten public servants surveyed agreed that officials serve the public, not the elected government.
 
“Officials keep their jobs when governments change and, in return, serve whichever government voters choose. But the public service fails that neutrality test, especially among managers and senior leaders. Ministers are left having to check officials’ work closely, and struggle to deliver what they were elected to do,” said Dr Blaschke.
 
Many officials surveyed backed tactics that undermine ministers they disagree with. Sixty-two percent agreed officials should frame advice to steer a minister away from a decision. Fifty-five percent agreed they should brief outside groups and the media to make a minister’s policy politically untenable, rising to nearly two in three among the managers and leaders who sign off advice.
 
Interviews suggest this goes beyond attitudes. Most interviewees described agencies working against their own ministers, from delay and dilution to open refusal.
 
“Advice can be reworked through layers of management until the analysts who wrote it no longer recognise it. By then, the experts’ view can be lost,” said Olsen.
 
The quality of policy advice is also slipping. In 2020/21, around eight in ten agencies met their own quality targets; by 2024/25, just over half did. When an independent panel commissioned by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet re-graded a sample of papers, it marked them down for lacking information ministers need to make decisions.
 
“Whether they lean left or right, voters elect a government on what it promises to do. If officials decide which of those promises go ahead, they override the will of the public and it is no longer clear who runs the country,” said Dr Blaschke.

Watch a short explainer video of our report below.