Three ministers down but not out?

Five months into the job and Chris Hipkins has dealt with the loss of three ministers. The questions now are about how this affects the government's popularity and its work agenda

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Thursday, June 22, by Anna Rawhiti-Connell. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: renewed calls for Oranga Tamariki residences to be shut down; the local reaction to the liquidation of Ruapehu Alpine Lifts; 229 jobs on the line at Victoria University of Wellington; but first, Wood’s resignation adds further load to ministers who already have hefty portfolios

How many shares would Michael Wood share if Michael Wood could share shares?

Michael Wood resigned as a minister yesterday after it came to light that he owned more shares, including shares in Chorus, Spark, and National Australia Bank. As Toby Manhire writes, prime minister Chris Hipkins seemed genuinely perplexed, angry and frustrated noting that “if the earlier chapters of the Wood shareholding mystery, surrounding his non-disclosure and failure to divest shares in Auckland Airport despite being asked a dozen times by the Cabinet Office, were perplexing, this is beyond baffling.” As far as risk to the government’s popularity in an election year goes, I think Manhire’s point about the appearance of “third-termitis” during a second term encapsulates one of greatest risks. That goes beyond the realm of individual scandal and taps into public sentiment.

Two resignations and one defection in five months

In the wake of the first tranche of news about Michael Wood, the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan wrote (paywalled) that “ministerial scandals - even repeated ones - rarely bring down governments.” But two resignations prompted by conflicts of interest and the perception that creates, and one defection in five months in an election year? It’s hard to know what kind of impact this may have. This is exactly where the current Labour government finds itself following the resignations of Stuart Nash in March, Wood yesterday, and the defection of Meka Whatiri to Te Pāti Māori in May. The latest polling this week had Labour up, despite the Nash and Whatiri situations.

The counter-narrative

The most empirical thing I could find about the impact of ministerial resignations on popularity was this pretty old paper (2005) from the London School of Economics which uses some hardcore data analysis to draw the conclusion that these kinds of scandals, when cauterised quickly and where accountability can be sheeted towards an individual, can positively affect government popularity. The results go so far as to suggest that prime ministers should welcome a certain number of resignation issues so that they can fire ministers thereby enhancing government popularity. It’s 2023 and we live in New Zealand and not the United Kingdom, so take that with a grain of salt, but the research does give credence to Coughlan’s line of thinking. The Herald’s Audrey Young also writes (paywalled) that the “one vaguely positive feature for prime minister Chris Hipkins in forcing Michael Wood’s ministerial resignation…is that Hipkins was given the opportunity to control the process, to fast-forward Wood’s resignation, and to impose a raft of measures to tighten up the management of ministerial conflicts of interest.” Hipkins has made five changes to the conflict of interest disclosure rules which apply to ministers, outlined here by interest.co.nz’s Dan Brunskill.

The workload and the work agenda

Hipkins moved quickly to assign Wood’s portfolios to senior ministers. Andrew Little will pick up immigration, Carmel Sepuloni takes Auckland and workplace relations and safety, David Parker takes transport and Kiritapu Allan will take Wood’s associate finance minister role. That splits the transport and Auckland portfolios. The logic of unifying these portfolios was a key selling point when Wood was announced as the minister for Auckland and as BusinessDesk’s Dileepa Fonseka writes (paywalled), the Auckland Light Rail project has lost a champion following his resignation. Because I am a sad nerd, I’ve done a quick count on portfolio reshuffles since Nash resigned in March. Sepuloni and Peeni Henare have picked an additional two portfolios each, while Little and Parker add one hefty portfolio each to existing hefty portfolios. Parker, in particular, as environment minister has the RMA reforms on his plate. Perhaps, aside from the early onset of “third-termitis”, one of the biggest risks facing Hipkins and his desire to focus on the issues New Zealanders care about the most, is the sheer amount of work left for the government to do, down a very capable minister and with a limited number of sitting days remaining before the House rises. It is not so much the scandal of these events that’s the problem, but the practical reality of managing ministerial workload and the work programme, while having to fight these kinds of fires.

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Renewed calls for Oranga Tamariki residences to be shut down

Following yesterday’s news that an investigation is underway after allegations were made against Oranga Tamariki, the Children's Commissioner, Frances Eivers, has renewed her call for these kinds of residences to be shut down. Eivers told RNZ’s Checkpoint last night that her staff talked to a range of people at one residence during an unannounced visit and it became obvious there was an issue. It was “serious enough” for her to pick up the phone, call Oranga Tamariki, and advise them of the situation. The allegations involve inappropriate sexual behaviour, with at least five children impacted. Former police commissioner Mike Bush will take on the leadership of all Youth Justice and Care and Protection residences, with Oranga Tamariki CEO Chappie Te Kani saying Bush will “lead a rapid review across all our residences, including our Oranga Tamariki community-based homes.”

‘The volcano may as well have erupted last night and wiped us out’

Listening to RNZ’s The Panel yesterday, journalist Neesha Bremner described how the news of Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL) being put into liquidation yesterday was landing locally, saying that one person had said that “the volcano may as well have erupted last night and wiped us out”. Bremner also reported receiving texts from people saying “Congratulations, $100k just got wiped off the value of your house”.  As Bremner notes, RAL provided 5% of the jobs in the Ruapehu district and it’s not a wealthy community, with 45% of the population living in deprivation. Flipping through yesterday’s edition of The Ruapehu Bulletin (very solid masthead title), the local paper was pressing on with a call for ad bookings for the July school holiday edition of the Ruapehu Snow Bulletin. As BusinessDesk’s Riley Kennedy reports (paywalled) PwC’s John Fisk and Richard Nacey were appointed as the liquidators and say they are working “hard” to avoid the worst-case scenario, which is shutting down the operation of the Tūroa and Whakapapa ski fields. Fisk said he couldn’t say whether the ski season would definitely go ahead yet, but 300 ski staff were due to arrive soon. “We want to see something as soon as possible ... we have a short runway here.”

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229 jobs on the line at Victoria University of Wellington

As the Herald’s Georgina Campbell reports, Victoria University of Wellington confirmed yesterday that 229 jobs are on the line and that there is a proposal to discontinue seven courses including Italian, German, Greek, Latin, postgraduate design technology, secondary school teaching, and postgraduate geographical information systems. There is currently a predicted shortage of secondary school teachers. As RNZ’s John Gerritson reports, universities have reported hundreds fewer enrolments in teacher education programmes this year including 65 fewer students for secondary school teacher training. I thought this from Catherine Abou-Nemeh, a lecturer at Victoria, was a very well-constructed column about the consequences of underfunding universities.

Click and Collect

• Secondary school teachers call off industrial action

• RNZ staffer under investigation over ‘pro-Kremlin garbage’ quits

• Gore mayor Ben Bell and councillors apologise to CEO

• The school lunch programme reaching beyond the school gate

• Am not hardcore enough to be part of any big-time fan culture but I enjoy reading about the more innocent end of the spectrum. A New Zealand Swiftie (a Taylor Swift fan), explains why she’ll be paying thousands to see Swift in Australia. New Zealand was left off the tour schedule.

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Human intelligence is the basis of artificial intelligence

Freely admit to being left cold by a lot of chat about artificial intelligence, but this piece caught my eye. It’s from New York Magazine and The Verge and looks at the massive amount of work done by humans to train AI. Annotators are the real people who do “the tedious work of processing the raw information used to train artificial intelligence”. The story of their work disrupts the idea that AI is an AI-perpetuated and AI-sustained industry. Sonam Jindal from the nonprofit Partnership on AI says “Human intelligence is the basis of artificial intelligence, and we need to be valuing these as real jobs in the AI economy that are going to be here for a while.” One of my favourite newsletters,

Today in Tabs

served it up to me, with this excerpt: “ChatGPT seems so human because it was trained by an AI that was mimicking humans who were rating an AI that was mimicking humans who were pretending to be a better version of an AI that was trained on human writing.” Dizzying.