New Zealand’s ministers answer to Parliament for departments they cannot control. They cannot choose, direct or remove the chief executives who run those departments. The Public Service Commissioner makes those appointments.

The New Zealand Initiative argues this arrangement is broken. It recommends that New Zealand adopt a version of Germany’s model, where ministers appoint their top officials while a protected career service operates below.

The state sector changes of 1988 were meant to make chief executives more accountable to ministers, but fixed-term contracts renewable by the Commissioner shifted accountability to the bureaucratic system instead.

Some departments answer to as many as twenty different ministers. Ministers work from the Beehive, separated from the departments they are accountable for.

Virtually every other developed democracy gives its elected ministers some say over who runs their departments. France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom all do. New Zealand does not.

Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of the Initiative, examines three international models in Who Runs the Country? and argues Germany’s approach offers the best fit.

“Governments of all stripes have struggled to turn their agendas into action,” said Dr Hartwich. “No one person is to blame. The system itself makes ministers accountable for results they cannot deliver.”

Germany does it differently. Ministers appoint their top officials from a pool of candidates with proven competence. Ninety per cent of these posts are filled from within the career service, not by outside loyalists. Career officials below are protected by statute.

The Initiative is calling on the government to legislate for ministerial appointment of chief executives, with safeguards to prevent the system from sliding into jobs for mates.

“Voters elect governments to govern,” said Dr Hartwich. “The least we can do is give ministers the tools to do the job.”