Jobs for the boys (and girls) common

There’s nothing unusual about the National-coalition Government appointing a cadre of former Cabinet ministers to plum public sector jobs.

Former deputy prime minister Paula Bennett’s appointment as chairperson of government drug-buying agency Pharmac, announced on Sunday, was just the latest in a string of appointments of John Key-era ministers.

Former National Party leader Simon Bridges has been appointed chairperson of NZTA Waka Kotahi, former prime minister Sir Bill English has been leading a review into Kāinga Ora, and former ministers

Steven Joyce and Murray McCully have been appointed to an infrastructure panel and education property review, respectively.

Such appointments are not new. Both Labour and National Governments routinely appoint the politically-aligned to public sector boards and other jobs.

Notable examples of such appointments during the Jacinda Ardern Government include former education minister Steve Maharey being appointed chairperson of ACC and Pharmac, former finance minister Sir Michael Cullen heading up the Tax Working Group, and the appointment of Labour MP Louisa Wall as a Pacific gender equity ambassador.

But the practice has its critics, as well as its supporters.

Max Rashbrooke, a senior research fellow in the school of government at Victoria University of Wellington, said political parties wanted to appoint people to jobs that they thought “were sympathetic to their views of the world”.

Another factor – not relevant in these appointments but in prior cases – was that such appointments can be used to ease people out of being an MP.

But Rashbrooke said such decisions were made in private, and it was “very hard to prove hand-on-heart that this stuff happens”.

He said such politicisation of the public service should be resisted.