The Machinery Of N.Z. Government

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31197, 22 October 1966, Page 4

The Machinery Of N.Z. Government

Government By Party. Parliament and Politics in New Zealand. By Austin Mitchell. Whitcombe and Tombs. 166 pp.

Both Dr. Mitchell and Mr T. P. Shand, who contributes a foreword, comment on the paucity of up-to-date information about the machinery of government in New Zealand, its working and the relationship of the political parties to it. Mr Shand speaks of j Dr. Mitchell’s "ploughing |

new ground.” It is necessary to mention at once that when they wrote both were obviously unaware of “Political Parties in New Zealand,” a scholarly general survey by Professor R. S. Milne, formerly professor of political science at Victoria University, Wellington, which the Oxford University Press published last July. Dr. Mitchell explains that his book is intended “merely as a partial and interim sketch, a small prelude to a larger study,” on which he is now engaged. The present book comprises a series of interviews for television and radio with six individuals prominent in government, preceded by an essay which surveys the whole subject in rather more detail, puts the interviews in perspective “and reveals the pattern of thought behind the questioning." Notes on the dustjacket explain that “Government By Party." has been written for students of political science, but has much to offer the general reader, the person curious about “the men on the hill,” whom he has elected to govern New Zealand. With a General Election imminent, the book should surely be of great interest to the general reader. Drawing mainly on his interviews with the Prime Minister, Mr Holyoake, and Mr Shand, who is chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Government Administration, Dr. Mitchell describes the Cabinet system. He has gathered details about procedure which readers will find fascinatingly interesting, when he describes how material reaches the ' Cabinet, the predigestion proI cess by permanent and “ad

hoc” committees the pattern of discussion, and methods for reaching decision. Cabinet papers which Ministers are required to study over weekends to ensure that they arrive at the Monday Cabinet meeting fully informed are now an established feature of procedure, and a vast improvement on the old system of verbal reports by Ministers. Dr. Mitchell mentions (though on what authority he does not say) that when verbal reports were the rule under the first Labour Government, “business could still be held back by some Ministers until Mr Nash’s departures overseas allowed it to come forward in a flood.”

A section on the Minister and his Department, and the interview with Mr Shand, are most importantly concerned with the balance of power between the two elements, political and administrative. The key area of contact comes at the level of relationships between the Minister and his senior departmental officials. As Dr. Mitchell says, because this is a personal relationship depending on individuals it is the aspect of government most difficult to describe. Nevertheless, he successfully ventures a balanced and informative summary which gives weight to both the limiting factors of Ministerial control and its strengths. Discussion of the party caucus also is difficult because both the National and Labour Parties bind their members to silence. The web of secrecy is rarely penetrated, partly Dr. Mitchell says, “because the craft of political journalism, only recently developed in Britain, has not yet been imported.” Reservations may be held about this explanation; New Zealand has had, and has, notable exponents of political journalism. However, caucus is a central problem for the political scientist, as Dr. Mitchell says, and with assistance from his interviews with Mr Holyoake, Mr May, the Labour Party’s chief whip, and Mr Tizard, a Labour Party member, he pieces together a credible sketch which by and large rejects as unrealistic a popular belief that government is by party caucus. The party organisation outside Parliament, the individual member and his duties, the institution of Parliament are other headings in Dr. Mitchell’s survey. Always he writes vividly and with a gift for graphic phrases and illustrations. Sometimes events run ahead

of even Dr. Mitchell’s urge to be topical, as when he is discussing a suggestion for an extra Minister without departmental duties who would be responsible for planning and co-ordinating the various aspects of an overall economic plan—“an instant George Brown.” Mr Harold Wilson spoilt this illustration when he made Mr Brown Foreign Secretary a couple of months ago. In his preface Dr. Mitchell points by implication to a weakness in the present book when he says that his larger study, to be written over a longer term, “can have more depth and less dogmatism: more analysis and less assertion.” Experience and reflection might cause Dr Mitchell to modify such sweeping assertions as: “ ... broadcasting is the only effective means of giving Parliament a real voice in view of the conservative bias and the unadventurous nature of the New Zealand press”; or, “the press is unrepresentative, its correspondence columns the forum of the fanatic who can escape editorial filtering.” Dr. Mitchell might want to revise other assertions, such as (speaking of the National Party’s conference) “nor has the conference ever claimed any right to decide policy for the parliamentary party.” In deeper studies he would encounter examples such as that of the party conference and the introduction of P.A.Y.E. The Prime Minister, Mr Holland, indicated to the 1954 conference a wish to introduce P.A.Y.E. in the then current session, but the party conference rejected a remit that would clear the way for Mr Holland. The Prime Minister took the question back to the conference which agreed to a formula for discussion of the subject between the parliamentary party and the party organisation. In the end, the conference’s claim to a right to decide policy for the parliamentary party was defeated; but it was made. For the general reader, “Government By Party” contains a great deal of information, argument and recommendations which are presented always clearly, and sometimes vividly and challengingly. T f the book stimulates interest in the machinery of government it will serve an excellent purpose. The material gathered for this book should be helpful to Dr. Mitchell’s broader, deeper study which could be a notable contribution to the literature of New Zealand politics.