Co-governance key to Campbell saga
As they say, the OPINION: prospect of execution does focus the mind. Until last week, Rob Campbell was the board chairman of the Environmental Protection Authority and of Te Whatu Ora, the new entity running the nation’s hospitals. With hindsight though, he was probably living on borrowed time.
Co-governance had been a key rationale for the new structures in public health. The fledgling Mā ori Health Authority (Te Akai Whai Ora) has been set up and empowered to turn around the dismal health statistics for Mā ori.
These include a seven-year gap in life expectancy compared to Pā keha.
National and Act have since indicated that they see no place for co-governance, either in water management, or in public health delivery. Fort its part, the Labour Government led by Chris Hipkins has also been giving signs of regarding co-governance as a political liability, and appears intent on dialling it back.
Meaning: Campbell must have been feeling the walls closing in, even before he made his social media comments about National’s leader and the party’s plans for water management. As his critics have pointed out, Campbell had signed up to the strictures of the Crown Entities Act, which requires political neutrality from the heads of crown agencies.
Campbell argued that the act also provides some latitude for private expression, which – in his not widely held opinion – the social media posts were, at least to an extent that made his subsequent sacking seem like an over-reaction.
For better and worse, a strict reading of the act gave Campbell no wiggle room. Campbell had more valid grounds for feeling aggrieved, given that the
Hipkins administration now seems to be backing away from any assurances around cogovernance that might have been given to Campbell back when he signed his contract.
Campbell’s skills as a director will enable his own career to survive this episode. The real losers have been the public in general, and Mā ori in particular.
The country has lost one of the most articulate champions of cogovernance principles within the Wellington political establishment. During election year, the country needs to have an informed debate about cogovernance.
Instead, the conventions set out in the public service manual have had the chilling effect of stifling public debate. It remains questionable whether many local councils would have the ability to raise the necessary finance to renew the country’s ageing water infrastructure, even if – as National appears to be suggesting – they raise rates and impose connection fees and volume charges for water use, nationwide.
Campbell is not alone in being sceptical on that point.
In his now infamous social media post, he had also slammed National for allegedly pandering to the racists who resent
Mā ori having any decisionmaking role within Three
Waters, or anywhere else.
The Campbell saga has highlighted a wider problem. If experienced officials are to be denied the ability to comment by the convention of public service neutrality, and if journalists are to be similarly constrained by the conventions of objectivity from robustly evaluating public policy, then who, exactly, is going to lead the public debate that we keep on saying we need to have on the major policy issues of the day?