Irredeemably policy-driven
When a former prime minister and renowned legal brain says there is too much politics in policy, it pays to listen, writes David Slack.
The thing about working in the prime minister’s office is that even when the administration is utterly doomed, you still wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
I was there in 1990 when Geoffrey Palmer was prime minister. Yes, Geoffrey Palmer, the man some people like to paint as a yawn or a wonk. They like to remember the time he used a ten dollar word like ‘pluvial’. And that’s about it.
So here he comes with a new book about a new constitution for New Zealand and I see them doing it again, and I think: you know what, this is getting a bit old.
At law school he was clear, he had energy, he was a great teacher. They weren’t all like that. One of those professors has a celebrated international reputation today as a great jurist of our time, but I didn’t just fall asleep in his lectures, I fell asleep in his exam.
So now it’s 1990 and the administration is doomed, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Mondays in the Beehive, there’s a cabinet meeting, then there’s a press conference where the Prime Minister briefs the press gallery about what happened in cabinet. Then he comes back and briefs his staff about what happened in cabinet and one briefing is more frank than the other.
One day he began: ‘‘ACC is a bloody shambles.’’ This was coming from the same Geoffrey Palmer who had helped Sir Owen Woodhouse design the whole scheme.
I first learned about ACC from my torts professor who was, well, guess who. This is what he taught us: the old system was a bloody shambles. You might get in a terrible accident at work. You might lose a limb. You might be in hospital for months, out of work, out of money. You’d have to take your employer to court for compensation. You might find yourself in court for years. The whole thing would be a lottery and you might very well end up with pennies. The only people who knew for sure they’d be alright were the lawyers.
So they made a scheme where you could no longer sue for personal injury, and it worked. You suffer a personal injury by accident, you’re taken care of. No courts, no years of waiting, no lottery. But now there’s a new set of problems: getting the funding right, dealing with people who abuse the system, both clients and staff. It could quite easily end up a bloody shambles.
But here’s the thing. He didn’t mean that because it was now a shambles, ACC should be thrown out the window. He meant you can
Geoffrey Palmer believes we could make our constitution better and stronger.
expect any reform to throw up fresh problems. You monitor, you analyse, you come up with solutions.
This is his recurring theme: get your policy right. You can read about it in the memoir he wrote a little while ago about some of our enduring problems: in liquor reform, in resource management, in law and order, in the justice system.
He says he sees too much politics and not enough policy in many of these debates and he’s not wrong.
Politics, policy, what’s the difference? Think of building a fence. One way to do it would be: get yourself a load of timber and posts, stick a post in here, stick in another couple over there, glue some timber on the top of the posts, and get someone to stand between the posts holding up a gate. Forever. That’s how politics builds a fence.
Or you could say: this is how we build a fence. We put a post at these intervals, this is where we put the hinges for the gate, and this is how much cement the footings need, and are you kidding me, were you really going to have someone standing here all day holding up a gate?
You might feel put off by a memoir about reform. You might feel put off by dry talk about a new constitution. But when I see a candidate for president saying ‘‘You’d be in jail’’ I think: the stronger your constitution is, the better you’re protected from idiots who can’t build a fence and pig-ignorant thugs who want to imprison their political opponents.
Geoffrey Palmer believes we could make our constitution better and stronger. I think we should take a look at his book.
@DavidSlack