PM tells lobbyists to 'go through the front door'

New measures to regulate lobbyists have so far been called 'fairly weak', a ‘soggy lettuce leaf’ and likened to some excellent political satires

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Tuesday, April 4, by Anna Rawhiti-Connell. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: Australia and Britain getting "increasingly aggressive" about poaching New Zealand nurses; National’s first climate policy — good and/or magical thinking?; ousted Te Whatu Ora chair calls health reforms half-baked; but first, prime minister’s four initiatives to regulate lobbyists largely judged as toothless

(Image: Tina Tiller)

‘Go through the front door like every other New Zealander’

Issues of power and influence within our political sphere came to something of a head yesterday with the announcement of new measures to regulate lobbyists from prime minister Chris Hipkins, and Stuart Nash’s decision to stand down from politics at the next election. Toby Manhire assesses the four measures which include a fresh policy review on regulating lobbying, removal of swipe card access for lobbyists, a voluntary code of conduct with funding support from the government and a revision of the cabinet manual. On the removal of swipe card access for lobbyists Hipkins said “My view is they should go through the front door like every other New Zealander.” 

Scarce public resources being spent on creating the code that isn’t mandatory

Manhire spoke to Max Rashbrooke who has been a long-time advocate of measures to improve transparency in politics. His assessment of the measures announced? Fairly weak and largely symbolic. RNZ’s political editor Jane Patterson described the voluntary code of conduct as a wet lettuce leaf. The NZ Herald’s Thomas Coughlan (paywalled) describes the belated crackdown as coming straight from the playbook of Yes, Minister, The Thick of It, or Australia’s Utopia. Coughlan makes more than a couple of salient points writing that if the lobbying industry is scary and influential enough to warrant additional regulation, it probably isn’t appropriate to ask them how they want to be regulated. He also suggests that if scarce public resources are being spent on creating the code, it should be mandatory. 

Nash stepping down from politics

Though not directly related to lobbyists, Stuart Nash’s announcement that he will be stepping down from politics is tied to broader issues of perceptions of influence. Nash made his announcement via a Facebook post with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s Citizenship in a Republic speech, delivered by Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910. Nash cited The Man in the Arena passage as his political philosophy. Never one to let an opportunity for some trivia to pass me by, basketballer LeBronJames has #ManInTheArena written on his shoes, Nelson Mandela gave South African captain Francois Pienaar a copy of the verse prior to the Springboks’ victory over the All Blacks at the 1995 Rugby World Cup and Richard Nixon referenced it in both his victory and resignation speeches.

Renewed call for tougher penalties for failing to comply with official information laws

It’s unlikely we’ll see film adaptations of Nash’s story as we have with the Springbok victory and the scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation, but if this were a cinematic universe, the crossover event would be Espiner’s investigation which was the result of lodging more than 70 Official Information Act (OIA) requests. As the Ombudsman investigates whether an email from Stuart Nash sharing cabinet discussions with political donors was improperly withheld after an OIA request in 2021, Espiner’s investigation no doubt expedited Hipkins’ plans to try and improve the appearance of transparency in government. This part of the Nash saga concludes with renewed calls to impose tougher penalties for those that fail to comply with official information laws. Lawyer Graeme Edgeler will have more on that on The Spinoff later this morning. Hipkins did not address the OIA yesterday, saying it was “a fundamentally sound piece of legislation”, though “there may be opportunities for improvement”. Hipkins also released terms of reference for the review announced last week into Stuart Nash's communications with donors.

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National’s first climate policy — good and/or magical thinking?

On Friday, the National party announced plans to double New Zealand's renewable energy supply. National party leader Christopher Luxon described the current consenting regime for wind farms as an unnecessary barrier, saying a new wind farm will take 10 year to complete — "eight years to obtain resource consent, and two years to build." Couple of reads for you on this. First, Simon Wilson asked Luxon what parts of the current consenting process he would remove (paywalled). Luxon replied “none of them”. Wilson pressed him further on how the time frame would be shortened and concludes the promise sounds like magical thinking. Newsroom’s Marc Daalder concludes the plan is undoubtedly good but if National also repeals policies like the oil and gas exploration ban, Luxon will have a hard job setting out what he'll do to plug the gaps he's creating.

Australia and Britain getting "increasingly aggressive" about poaching New Zealand nurses

As RNZ’s Rowan Quinn reported yesterday, nearly 5000 New Zealand nurses have registered to work in Australia since August. A health recruitment specialist says Australia and Britain are getting "increasingly aggressive" about poaching New Zealand nurses to deal with their own critical shortages amid global demand but warns the grass may not be much greener over the Tasman. On other matters relating to immigration and migration, Politik’s Richard Harman details what he describes as one the “most forensic interrogations we have seen at a Select Committee this year”. National’s immigration spokesperson, Erica Stanford grilled immigration minister Michael Wood and a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment official on a range of issues that have cropped up with Immigration New Zealand and the Accredited Employer Work visa. One of the allegations raised was the “selling” of jobs in New Zealand by overseas agents in cahoots with New Zealand employers, with Immigration NZ not running credential checks.

Alex Braae and I talk about how The Bulletin is made

For the 5th birthday of The Bulletin, founding editor Alex Braae sat down with me at a special event for Spinoff members. We were interviewed by The Spinoff’s editor Madeleine Chapman and recorded the conversation for Duncan Greive’s podcast, The Fold. If you’ve ever wanted to know a bit more about how The Bulletin gets made, who we imagine our readers are and how the job changed our views of the media, you can have a listen here, on The Fold.

Rob Campbell calls health reforms half-baked

In a speech delivered to the Fabian Society in Wellington on Monday night, former Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell said the reform that replaced district health boards with Te Whatu Ora had not made enough change. "It may have looked ok on a whiteboard but in practice it looked like the half-baked cake it was," he said. Campbell said the reforms were too focused on the broader public service and not on the real needs of clinical and care providers and the wider population, and that the new health agency had kept too many of the old management roles - as well as some ineffective managers, he said. A copy of the speech was sent to RNZ. Te Whatu Ora have declined to comment.

Click and collect

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• Winston Peters gives lengthy interview to conspiracy theorist Liz Gunn

• Veteran Gore councillor resigns over “unsustainable anxiety” 

• US to open embassy in Vanuatu 

• EziBuy has gone into administration with its owner hoping it will change to become a “simplified, profitable, cash-generative online-only operation”

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This was recommended by a colleague and it was a good recommendation. American broadcasting legend Barbara Walters died last year and New York Magazine has assembled 17 othe broadcasters including Katie Couric, Connie Chung and Christiane Amanpour, all of them pretty legendary themselves, to reflect on her legacy, the sexism they’ve encountered, the trail Walters blazed and the bizarre, cutthroat and changing world of broadcasting.