Guest Post: On being a Minister

A guest satirical post by Owen Jennings, former ACT MP:

Imagine for a few moments that you have been appointed the Minister of Health in a new government.  You don't know a lot about health policy.

It is your first day in the saddle.  Sitting across the desk from you are the top departmental bureaucrats armed with files and a plan to “capture” their Minister before he gets any bright ideas that run counter to the perceived wisdom that is current health policy.  

A quick glance down at your diary shows that your next couple of days are jammed pack full with meetings with unions, DHB's, government appointed bodies, academics.  No sign of any private sector people.  You have lain awake the last couple of nights trying to figure out what to do and how to implement the ideas you have chased around the country in the election campaign.

Where do you start?

Surely one of the very early questions you will ask the departmental mandarins is, “what are the major risks and health threats we face as a country?”   The follow up question would then be, “how well are we prepared for these threats?” 

Equally, surely, one of the department heads would reply, among the options, that every 20 years or so we face a flu pandemic and we haven't had one for a while.  “As to preparedness, Minister, we have a file here you can read that sets out our policy for pandemics.  We are fully covered”.

You now have two broad choices.  You can thank your staff for such competence, tuck the file in your satchel along with the 276 others and breeze through it on the plane going home, happy you are carrying out your tasks with all diligence.

Or you might take a “Prebble-istic” approach. You might invite a very experienced and successful businessman to look at the preparedness with a practical eye.  “Check out for me what would happen if a major bug did hit us.  What beds would be available and where, what protective facilities do we have and where are they, what testing arrangements do we have and how quickly can we increase capacity?   Have something on my desk in three weeks.  Get it right and you will be well paid”.

Why the latter option?  It's simple.  As Minister it's your backside that's exposed.  The buck stops with you.  The departmental people can disappear into their offices and avoid the spotlight.  As Minister you cannot simply ride off on your bike and disappear down your favourite hill course.  You do not want to be ever known as the Minister who was caught unprepared.  The Minister who failed to ask the right questions and look past the discussion paper's headlines that all was well.   You do not want to be accused of not being up to date, of having policy that was out of touch and under resourced.  The one thing you have learned that it is difficult to hide policy making failures in a world of the Official Information Act.

The challenge for you is going to be when your businessman reports in and tells you that you are going to need to fund a “better preparedness” plan and you face a cabinet full of colleagues all eager to suck up taxpayer's hard earned dollars on their own wildcat schemes.  Suddenly the Cabinet room becomes an auction house.

You are going to be part of a team facing tradeoffs.  Will we cancel the upgrading of the Tauranga to Katikati highway where there are too many road deaths so we can plant trees on good farm land to suck up CO2?  Will we delay buying equipment for an isolation strategy in a probable flu epidemic or build a cycleway on the Auckland harbour bridge?  Should we introduce tough new water quality measures while farmers are struggling and suiciding?  Will get more money for new drugs to save five to ten lives or will we build a tramline to the airport?  Can we afford to close maternity hospitals in Southland risking mothers and babies lives so we can shift the Port of Auckland to Whangarei?

A year or so later and you are still musing and weighing up such options when the phone goes.  The expected pandemic has arrived.  It's the PM on the line.   A friend from overseas has called and recommends going into lockdown to save lives.  “We cannot afford to lose any of our people.  The modelling shows we could lose 40,000 people without a lockdown”.

“Is that the same calibre of modelling that has the planet warming by five degrees over the next few decades”, you ask, timidly.  “It could be overstating the numbers because there are just too many unknowns to get any degree of accuracy”.

Getting bolder you tell the PM, “this is just another instance of making a trade off.  If we manage things so we tighten down on the border, throw resources at testing and tracing and focus on keeping our older people very securely protected we can get through without devastating the economy.”

“Minister, stop reading the blogs and get this clear.  We are the government of kindness.  We will save every life we can at whatever the cost, even the very old and frail.  am going to front the public.  You can stay home and work from there. I will call when I need you.”

Being sent home is code for getting sacked so you make a last stand.  “Look PM, the lockdown is not necessary.  The only losses that might occur are going to be among those at risk, those over 70 years who have life threatening issues anyway.  Our economy is too fragile to absorb a massive that will surely occur if we close everything down.  We will never be able to fund the recovery.  People will be lost to depression, suicide, inability to access the reduced healthcare that will follow and the tensions in families and businesses that will be inevitable”.

“Just leave all that to me. The world is now looking to my leadership so I must stay true to my image.  We can raise taxes, bring in CGT, up GST, push up fuel taxes, stimulate the economy with a range of new green initiatives.   I can even win the next election on the back of my plans and by staying in front of the nation, encouraging and beguiling them.  My friends in the media and the will continue to help us and I have social media agreeing to cooperate.  We have reduced the number of guns in the community so that eliminates that risk”. “Let's do this”.

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