The wrong reason to make someone a Minister

The Herald reports:

Mr Key gave the strongest hint yet that Mr Seymour would get a ministerial portfolio despite being a new MP, because it would give the party greater resources – “otherwise we'd have an MP pretty much on his own with an [executive assistant] and it is very difficult to manage that party-to-party relationship”.

Mr Seymour is expected to get Associate Education Minister, responsible for partnership schools, the official name for charter schools negotiated by Act in the last Government agreement.

Making a Minister so he gets extra staffing resources is the wrong reason to make him a Minister.

Also he will get more than just an executive assistant if he is not a Minister. He gets:

  • An executive assistant
  • Two out of Parliament staff
  • $164,320 for leadership funding
  • $22,000 for party funding
  • $64,260 for for electorate funding

David Seymour should only be appointed a Minister, if he is deemed capable of being an effective Minister. Not because the ACT Party in Parliament needs greater resources.

Now David is a former ministerial staffer and a policy wonk. He was the staffer who did most of the detailed work on charter schools. In a policy sense, he would be a capable Associate Minister.

But being a Minister is about more than policy. It is also about being able to handle the accountability that goes with it, through scrutiny in the House and . It is also about being able to work with officials, agencies and other as a team to get things implemented. In those areas Seymour is untested, and it is a risk to make a novice MP a Minister.

The last two novice MPs who were made Ministers were and Margaret Wilson.  One was a highly successful CEO and the other was a Law School Dean.

From a policy point of view, I'd like to see David as a Minister, helping implement more charter schools (and making sure that only the successful ones continue to be funded). But there are risks with making a novice MP a Minister, and he will be ruthlessly targeted by Chris Hipkins in the House.

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