Joint Cabinet and P.M.’s office to provide advice to Govt.

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 14

Joint Cabinet and P.M.’s office to provide advice to Govt.

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

A combined Cabinet and Prime Minister’s office to provide independent advice to the Government was agreed to by the Cabinet at its regular weekly meeting on Monday.

A review of the Cabinet Office and Prime Minister’s Office was released by the Prime Minister, Mr Palmer. He said the Cabinet had endorsed its conclusions and recommendations, and these would be implemented.

The review was conducted by the chairman of the State Services Commission, Mr Don Hunn, and a former Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Henry Lang. It was ordered by Mr Palmer when he took office three weeks ago. He said he wanted an office that would co-ordinate all features of Government policy in the most effective way. It also had to have the intellectual firepower to examine and advise on the advice to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet from the State departments.

The ability to do this work had become impaired as a consequence of the State sector reforms.

Mr Palmer agreed that “speed wobbles” — such as the launching and then canning of the December 17, 1987, economic package — were an example of what the new structure was designed to prevent.

The three main recommendations in the report are: • A new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to take over all the policy and coordination roles performed by the present Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Office and advisory group. • A separate private office for the Prime Minister to look after the day-to-day secretarial needs of the Prime Minister and include people providing political advice.

• Increase the 10 positions in the present advisory group to as many as 28. The new department would include staff involved in coordinating security and intelligence work for the Prime Minis-

ter. Mr Palmer said extra resources of up to $3 million in a full year would be needed, starting next financial year. “I am happy with the proposals,” he said. “I want to see a professional approach to policymaking and co-ordination, with a separation of that kind of advice from political advice. “We do not want needless duplication of existing functions elsewhere in the Government but we do need adequate and effective contestability of advice. In particular, I am looking for beefed-up analysis of the social consequences of the various proposals before the Government.” Asked if that meant the Government wanted access to economic advice other than that provided by the Treasury, Mr Palmer said: “Yes, and particularly on the social consequences of economic measures.”

Increased resources for the Prime Minister would have to be matched by increased resources for the Leader of the Opposition. This was the reaction of the

Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, who called for “balance in the increased power.” If Parliament were to continue to provide the proper checks and balances on Government action and executive power, then the Opposition parties would also have to have increased resources, he said.

A better-equipped Government had to be balanced by a betterequipped Opposition if Parliamentary democracy were to continue in New Zealand. The total staff available to the Prime Minister would be expanded to about 90 people while Mr Bolger’s office had only 11 — three of whom were either fully or partly funded by contributions from the private sector. That kind of imbalance in the provision of resources also had to be corrected if the Opposition were to continue to exercise proper scrutiny over the actions of a much better resourced Government, Mr Bolger said.

He invited Mr Palmer to commission the same team to review the resources available to the Opposition.