New Prime Minister’s Dept should make presence felt

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34026, 15 December 1975, Page 1

New Prime Minister’s Dept should make presence felt

( From

CEDRIC MENTIPLAY,

our Parliamentary reporter}

WELLINGTON, December 14. A new department was created, and all ties with another severed, within a few minutes of the official handing-over of power on Friday from Labour to National.

The Prime Minister’s Department came into being just before noon, with a new department head, Mr P. W. Galvin, seconded from the Treasury to lead it.

From that time members of the Prime Minister’s staff ceased to be paid by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A separate and independent Prime Minister’s Department has been envisaged for years, but for various reasons the step has not been taken until now. The Prime Minister’s staff has been administered as an arm of Foreign Affairs—a logical sequence because succeeding Prime Ministers have usually held the Foreign Affairs portfolio.

This has produced two situations which in other Government establishments would be considered odd indeed. The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at present Mr F. Comer, has been head of the Prime Minister’s operative staff; and that department has had a large and functional presence in the Prime Ministerial area on what was the roof of the original Parliament Buildings. Two new factors

Two new factors, plus some other likely ones, may be presumed to have influenced the change. One is that Mr Muldoon, as Prime Minister, has passed responsibility for Foreign Affairs to his deputy (Mr Taiboys). The other is

that the rapidly expanding Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already over-run the existing accommodation on the third floor of the so-called Marble Building, and has spread to other accommodation in the uptown Wellington area.

It is worth remembering that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is itself of comparatively recent growth. Before World War 11, New Zealand had few professional diplomats, and relied on the United Kingdom diplomatic service for its main representation overseas. Appointments as high commissioner were few, and made directly by the Prime Minister. When wartime pressures implied a separate representation, the late Mr Peter Fraser created the Department .of External Affairs. He appointed the then Mr A. D. Mclntosh (now Sir Alister Mclntosh) as “permanent head of the Prime Minister’s Department and Secretary of External Affairs.’’ High standards Mr Mclntosh, who had been assistant in the General Assembly Library before entering the Prime Minister’s service in 1935, was only 29, and had a distinguished educational record when chosen. He was secretary of the War Cabinet from 1943, and immediately began the task of building, virtually from nothing, a department of highly qualified diplomatic representatives.

The department (now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

has maintained the high, standards he set, while expanding to cover such overseas developments as the European Economic Market, the United Nations, and the rapid development of selfdetermination in the Pacific, in South-East Asia, and latterly in Africa and the Middle East. The connection (or rather, “special relationship”) between Foreign Affairs and thel Prime Minister’s Department! has been broken, and a tradition of 32 years stand-) ing has been ended. Predictions This change passed virtually unnoticed during the events of last Friday — the day the Labour Government formally resigned, the National Government took office, and the new Cabinet was announced. It has been predicted that the change will become the talking-point .of Wellington’s bureaucracy. But it has much greater significance than that. Its immediate and forseeable effects are:

The removal of the “rump” of Foreign Affairs from the

top storey of Parliament Buildings to a nearby deipartmental building.

! The filling of the vacated offic’es (which cluster about the old War Cabinet suite, now occupied by the Prime Minister) with publicity, research, monetary, and economics officers of the newly identified Prime Miinster’s Department. j The building-up of the ■Prime Minister’s publicity I corps to produce top-level ' news-media releases. The attachment of Minisiterial publicity officers, not, as at present, to the Tourist and Publicity Department, but to the Prime Minister’s Department. Firmer control The firmer control under one organisation of all publicity disseminated by the Government from the offices of members of the Cabinet; and The linking of Prime Ministerial functions with the Treasury rather than with Foreign Affairs. If the speed of' initiation is any indication, the new Prime Minister’s Department will make its presence felt quickly.