Risk often ignored, report warns
WELLINGTON: A new report reveals gaps in New Zealand’s risk management and seeks greater political transparency.
The report by Sir Peter Gluckman and Dr Anne Bardsley is titled ‘‘Uncertain but inevitable: The expertpolicypolitical nexus and highimpact risks’’.
Sir Peter, who is director at Koi Tu: The Centre for Informed Futures, said the role of government is to keep its citizens, environment and economy safe.
And yet, he said highrisk but predictable and inevitable events are often ignored by politicians and the policy community.
The report cites examples of the potential of a space weather event to wreak havoc on multiple, interconnected infrastructure systems.
Other high impact events include biosecurity issues, infrastructure issues, security issues and natural disasters.
Sir Peter said many highrisk events were foreseeable, even if their timing could not be predicted.
‘‘We know these things would occur but it costs money and investment to prepare for them and it’s easier to say ‘oh it won’t happen in our lifetime’ . . . so we put it off and if we keep on putting off things, bad things happen.’’
Sir Peter said one reason they could be ignored was that noone received credit for preventing disasters from happening.
‘‘If you don’t have the risk on the books — or in this case a riskregister — noone can hold you accountable.’’
He said politicians and people more generally tended to think about events in a short time frame.
‘‘Yet these major events will happen, they do happen and governments have the responsibility to prepare for them.’’
Sir Peter said worldwide, policymakers and experts identified the risks, but ‘‘there is a political resistance to making the choices that have to be made’’.
He said very few countries were prepared for the Covid19 pandemic, despite the fact experts had identified its inevitability.
Sir Peter said without a systematic approach something would be forgotten and the consequences could be large.
He said the report came after discussions with senior New Zealand officials and a lot of work was being done in New Zealand around identifying risks.
But Sir Peter said the work was not appearing in the public domain.
‘‘Politicians don’t like to be held accountable and accountability depends on people knowing what they’re accountable for.’’
He said the mark of good governance was maintaining the longterm view of your ultimate responsibilities.
‘‘In the private sector, accountability for risk management is very clear. In the public sector it’s not so clear, because of the electoral process.’’
The report suggests creating an independent national risk office in the Office of the Auditorgeneral, to oversee and maintain a publicly available risk register and provide oversight of agencies’ general approach to risk management. — RNZ