The Folly Of Impermanence.

“You talking about me?”  The neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of a public service that contributed nothing useful or worthwhile to the nation.

THE ABSENCE of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands would have engendered a much more aggressive response from the state-sector unions. The bonds of solidarity were a lot stronger then than they are now.

So, too, was the idea that public servants should not be laid-off in the same way as private sector workers. Offering workers in the state-sector a job for life was seen as critical to preserving both the Public Service’s effectiveness, and its integrity. It was also a way of paying workers in the state sector wages and salaries well below the “going rate” in the private sector. The state’s guarantee of permanence – job security – was an important part of retaining its workers’ loyalty, and preserving their bureaucratic efficiency.

Even in the depths of the Great Depression, it was considered more prudent to apply an across-the-board reduction in public servants’ wages and salaries than it was to engage in mass lay-offs. When the right-wing Coalition Government of 1932 announced a 10 percent cut in Postal and Telegraph workers’ wages, their protest meeting in the Auckland Town Hall, from which the unemployed were excluded (the venue being full-to-overflowing) became the catalyst for the Queen Street Riot that shook conservative Auckland to its core.

How many of today’s public servants are aware of their own history? Judging by their reaction to the loss of so many of their colleagues’ jobs – not many. A more likely proposition is that a clear majority of them would regard the idea of a job for life as just another of those absurd practices condoned by the protectionist regimes swept away by the reforming governments of the 1980s and 90s. For younger workers, in particular, impermanence of employment is a fact of life: a reflection of the economic “rationalism” to which all employees are subject; including public servants.

This tearing away of citizens from their nation’s past is the most important confirmation of the neoliberal ideology’s cult-like practices. Among the very first things that a cult seeks to do is engineer a complete break with the individual follower’s past. More than that, the cult leaders will go to extraordinary lengths to characterise everything that has come before as evil and destructive. The follower’s old reality is blamed for everything that has gone wrong with their lives; it has no redeeming features; and must be abandoned completely.

Anyone old enough to recall the transition from New Zealand’s formerly social-democratic society, to the market-driven neoliberal society ushered in by Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, will also remember the way in which everything that came before 1984 was cast in the worst possible light.

This neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” endearing caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of a public service that contributed nothing useful or worthwhile to the nation.

This invalidation of New Zealand’s past, operating relentlessly for forty years, has come at the price of growing cultural discontinuity. In the words of the distinguished American sociologist, Daniel Bell:

Today, each new generation, starting off at the benchmarks attained by the adversary culture of its cultural parents, declares in sweeping fashion that the status quo represents backward conservatism or repression, so that, in a widening gyre, new and fresh assaults on the social structure are mounted.

Compounding the culturally disintegrative effects of neoliberalism’s hatred of history, has been the parallel growth of the universities’ disparagement of Western culture in general. The extraordinary achievements of Western art, science, and politics have been reconfigured as expressions of White Supremacy. In a cultural pincer movement of remarkable social malignancy, the young Westerners of the early Twenty-First Century find themselves prevented from drawing anything but shame from the past, while moving into a future belonging to everyone but themselves.

The historical contrast presented by the current bureaucratic milieu, and that of the culture enveloping the public servants of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is stark. Drawing immense pride from their past, and comfortable in the cultural certainties of their present, they confronted the future of their country with enviable confidence. Christian or atheist, New Zealand’s public servants’ determination to bring “God’s Own Country” ever closer to its maker was manifested in the impressive cultural, social and physical infrastructure they bequeathed to future generations. Built to serve generations its creators would never meet, “Old” New Zealand’s infrastructure proved strong enough to withstand every challenge – except neoliberal hostility and neglect.

It is possible that the quietude of the 2024 Public Service: it’s apparent willingness to mount the scaffold without protest; is explicable not only in terms of its incapacity to draw strength from New Zealand’s past, but also on account of its lamentable failure to make the slightest impact on its present. Could it be persuaded that the charges levelled against public servants by the Coalition Government (and plenty of other New Zealanders besides!) are justified? Is the Public Service pleading “Guilty, as charged”.

After all, those public servants who had been given jobs for life seemed remarkably proficient at getting things done. They created an industrial relations system, an education system, a health system, and an accident compensation system, that ranked among the world’s finest. It designed and helped to construct a national network of roads and railways, as well as a hydro-electric power grid that allowed New Zealand to become a modern economy.

The public servants who rejected the very idea of jobs for life have very little to show for their market-inspired governance. Industrial relations in New Zealand would make America’s Nineteenth Century Robber Barons blush. Education and Health, post-1984, have steadily declined to their present parlous states. New Zealand’s rail network is a joke, and its roads are an obstacle course of potholes and plastic cones. The previous government, briefly seized by the future focus of its Labour predecessors, could not rely upon public servants to get its “transformative” plans off the ground. Labour’s successors – National, Act and NZ First – seem content to leave New Zealand’s future to their private-sector mates.

Impermanence, it would seem, is a guarantee of very little else but failure, and the inability to even envisage success. Denigrating the past has proved to be the most effective way of ensuring that the future never moves beyond the failures of the present. Disinheriting the owners of a culture, while demonising its creators, merely confirms Bell’s insight (following W. B. Yeats) that “in the widening gyre”, where “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”, the future will, indeed, belong to one “rough beast” after another.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 15 April 2024.

Dangerous Territory: Is It Time To Scrap The "No Surprises Rule"?

Not Happy: Winston Peters has every right to be outraged at the way his interactions with the Ministry of Social Development were drawn to the attention of Government ministers. It is only in dictatorships that state officials regard the private and personal information of the citizenry as a resource for advancing the interests of their political masters. 

THAT THE STATE SERVICES COMMISSIONER placed Winston Peters’ superannuation difficulties within the ambit of the “No Surprises Rule” is deeply troubling. Clearly, both the Commissioner and the Solicitor General (whom he consulted) considered the imminence of a General Election an insufficient reason for keeping what was, essentially, a matter of routine administration, confidential to the Ministry of Social Development and the citizen directly involved. Their decision to allow MSD officials to brief the Social Development Minister, Anne Tolley, that the leader of a rival political party was about to be interviewed by her ministry concerning superannuation overpayments, can only be construed as extending the scope of the No Surprises Rule into extremely dangerous territory.

Hitherto, the No Surprises Rule (which isn’t, in fact, a rule at all, but a convention dating back to the prime-ministership of Helen Clark) was only applied to the imminent public release of potentially controversial information pertaining to government administration. The classic example given is of a ministry which has just received a formal request for sensitive official information from the news media. Rather than have the minister “ambushed” by journalists, Prime Minister Clark argued that Cabinet members should be given a “heads up” by their officials. That way, rather than be caught on the hop, ministers would have plenty of time to be brought up to speed.

There is certainly a strong element of political logic to this expectation. What Minister wouldn’t feel blind-sided and seriously let down by their officials if the first he or she knew about a serious bureaucratic bungle was when the parliamentary wolf-pack came clamouring for explanations?

On the other hand, a stickler for the Westminster tradition of full ministerial responsibility might argue that any Minister inattentive enough to be surprised by the consequences of his or her own decisions deserves to be embarrassed by the news media. Such a constitutional pedant might further object that, practically speaking, the No Surprises Rule offers every bit as much protection to derelict public servants as it does to elected representatives? Yes, it may save the politician’s face, but may it not also cover the bureaucrat’s arse?

There are many in the journalistic profession who will attest to the malign transformation which has been wrought to the principle of political accountability by the No Surprises Rule. From a simple heads-up, it has mutated into the practice of no-holds-barred “perception management”. Public servants have morphed into PR mavens. The old maxim, “Information is Power”, has been used to justify an unprecedented “mind-meld” between the Executive Branch of government and what used to be this country’s neutral civil service.

Set in this context, the unwisdom of the State Services Commissioner’s dramatic extension of the No Surprises Rule’s scope is clear. Quite simply, the Minister of Social Development had no ministerial responsibility whatsoever for the discussions which were about to take place between her Ministry and Mr Peters. Or rather, she had no responsibility so long as those discussions remained – as they should have remained – completely confidential. The only possible justification for a “heads-up” from her officials would be if there was a reasonable possibility that the details of Mr Peters interview with the MSD were on the point of entering the public domain.

In other words, the State Services Commissioner reached the alarming conclusion that senior civil servants must now assume that all state ministries and departments are utterly incapable of protecting the New Zealand citizen’s right to privacy; and that any and all politically “juicy” information will, inevitably, find its way into the public domain.

But this is a calamitous assumption, which strikes at the heart of the public’s trust and confidence in the security of private information entrusted to the state. Worse still, it suggests that the “Information is Power” maxim has so taken hold within the ranks of ministerial advisers that they now feel professionally obligated to empower their political masters with the sort of information that neither public servants, nor politicians, have the slightest legitimate reason (or legal right!) to possess.

It is only in dictatorships that state officials regard the private and personal information of the citizenry as a resource for advancing the interests of their political masters. The State Services Commissioner had an opportunity to strike a blow for New Zealand democracy.

What a pity he didn’t take it.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 September 2017.

Call The Vet! Protecting The State From The Virus Of Dissent.

Vetter-in-Chief: Rebecca Kitteridge has a legitimate role in identifying potentially dangerous vulnerabilities, such as drug and alcohol addiction, in candidates for senior roles in the civil service. Where the SIS veers away from legitimate "vetting", however, is in its role as the state's ideological gatekeeper. When it comes to senior civil service positions, it is still very much a case of "anti-capitalists need not apply".

 

THAT THE SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (SIS) has failed to protect the privacy of the people it has “vetted” is no surprise. Information is power, and what is the SIS if not the official gatherer of the information needed to keep the core institutions of the state secure? It will take more than criticism from the Inspector-General of Intelligence to persuade the SIS to give up its role of keeping potential security threats as far away from the Government’s doors as possible.

 

Ideally, the whole notion of security vetting would be insupportable in a nation whose laws prohibit discrimination on the grounds of political belief. The persistence of the practice offers proof that Capitalism is still ready, willing and able to defend itself.

 

If you’re one of those who find it difficult to accept that our civil service is dedicated to the preservation of the capitalist status quo, then try this thought experiment.

 

A left-wing coalition government is elected on a platform of enacting root-and-branch reform of New Zealand’s economic system. The new government’s overall goal is the eradication of social inequality through radical changes to the prevailing fiscal and workplace regimes. The government announces that a major purge of the civil service will be necessary for its reforms to succeed. Accordingly, all present and prospective members of the senior echelons of the civil service are required to submit themselves to a comprehensive vetting process.

 

Senior bureaucrats found to have strong neoliberal sympathies are dismissed from their positions immediately. Neoliberals seeking employment in the reformed civil service are weeded out as real, or potential, threats to New Zealand’s national security. By the end of the purge, scores of civil servants have been advised that, having failed the SIS’s vetting procedure, their services are no longer required.

 

Now imagine the outrage that such an exercise would precipitate. Newspaper editors would thunder their disapproval. Leading law firms would announce their intention of challenging the purge in court. Civil rights advocates would prepare to stage protest demonstrations against the Government’s “Blue Scare” tactics. All of the defence mechanisms of capitalist society would be mobilised to ensure that the system’s ideological guardians remained in place.

 

Clearly, it would be next to impossible to purge a capitalist society like ours of its official defenders without being accused of abandoning democracy itself. And yet, we tell ourselves that democracy remains unimpaired in a country which actively discriminates against those who threaten to bring anti-capitalist ideas into the upper-echelons of the state bureaucracy. Why do so many of us simply accept that the SIS, having subjected such individuals to the most rigorous vetting, is justified in recommending they not be appointed to senior civil service posts?

 

That question was much easier to answer during the Cold War. (1946-1991) Back then it was entirely possible that state servants harbouring strong sympathies for the cause of International Communism and/or the Soviet Union might feel moved to pass on sensitive political and economic information to their ideological soul-mates. The national security implications of appointing such persons to sensitive positions could not (and were not) ignored.

 

National security concerns were also raised in regard to civil servants’ sexual orientation. While homosexuality remained legally, morally and socially unacceptable, gay civil servants were acutely vulnerable to blackmail.

 

In the twenty-first century, addictions to prohibited substances and/or alcohol can make state employees similarly biddable. It is, therefore, difficult to argue against some effort being made to uncover such vulnerabilities prior to appointing someone to a position where nationally important and highly confidential information is regularly circulated and discussed.

 

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decriminalisation of homosexuality has, however, removed the most obvious justifications for SIS vetting. The background checks undertaken by today’s security personnel should, accordingly, be restricted to identifying drug and alcohol abuse. Discrimination based upon a civil service job candidate’s political beliefs is, surely, be a thing of the past?

 

Don’t you believe it.

 

Today’s civil service, and most of our society generally, functions in an environment of aggressively enforced ideological orthodoxy. Neoliberalism is, without doubt, the most pervasive and effectively defended ideology in human history. Not to be a neoliberal in the early twenty-first century, especially in the upper echelons of the dominant public and private bureaucracies, is to risk career death. To openly espouse ideas hostile to neoliberalism is to make that career death certain.

 

The SIS stands as the last line of defence against the occasional incompetence of those specialist recruiting agencies entrusted with delivering short-lists of acceptable candidates for senior positions in the civil service. Personality tests, CV checks and exhaustive interviews with referees can usually be relied upon to filter out all the ideologically inappropriate applicants. Should the commercial gate-keepers prove derelict in their duties, however, Rebecca Kitteridge and her team of “vets” stand ready to protect the key institutions of the capitalist state from the deadly virus of dissent.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 9 April 2016.