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 David Seymour 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 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 select committees. 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 to make a novice MP a Minister.

The last two novice MPs who were made Ministers were Steven Joyce and .  One was a highly successful CEO and the other was a 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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