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Michael Papesch's avatar

I would have a lot more sympathy with the apparent new concern by journalists about "cronyism" and political appointees had they shown the same level of angst with political appointments made by previous administrations. As Bryce has noted, these types of appointments have gone on for many years, by politicians of all colours, not that you would know that from current journalism. There was barely a syllable written about in the (in)appropriateness of Craig Renney's appointment as political adviser to Grant Robertson - as close to the centre of political power as you can get. (While some might argue that a CTU appointment to Robertson's office is benign and doesn't really count, the fact is the CTU is a lobbyist for its membership, which itself is only a small proportion of NZ society). Labour made many other political appointments to Crown Entity Boards, most of which were ignored by media and some only came to light when they spectaturly had to leave office for inappropriate behaviour.

I have seen the work of a number of political appointess (aka "cronies") over the years - appointed by politicians of all colours - and many of them have been very good. What matters is their ability to do the job given to them. One of the advantages that so called crony appointees have is that they understand what the audience (politicians) need in terms of solutions that can be made to work in political systems. Too many "independent experts" don't have this knowledge, and many struggle to work out how to be effective in a political environment. They tend to end up being very, very reliant on the officials supporting them, which tends to negate the value of the "independent experts" from the get-go.

What matters is competence for the role that appointees have been appointed to, not their political colour or history. But understanding that is beyond the wit of many contemporary commentators.

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Cindy's avatar

As noted, there is nothing INHERENTLY wrong with appointing qualified "cronies" - the problem is the lack of checks & balances to show a) they ARE qualified and b) they don't have conflicts of interest as in the Mercer case (and others no doubt)

An Integrity Commission sounds like an interesting solution - while there are cronies appointed that do a reasonable job, it continues to erode public confidence & buy-in when the PERCEPTION is snouts in the trough by and for mates.

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