Announced just before Christmas, the soon-to-be-established Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport is a new public service mega merger, bringing together various bits of the Environment, Housing and Urban Development, Transport, and Internal Affairs ministries.
The stated intention is that the new ministry will bring the planning and funding roles of those organisations in the development sphere under one roof, thereby making planning and consenting a smoother process.
The government does have a point here; planning sits under the auspices of Environment but Transport and Housing are also deeply concerned with land use.
There is some duplication of roles, and there is also the potential for the ministries to be working at cross purposes, one funding a development that the other is unlikely to sanction.
However, the system was set up this way for a reason. It was never envisaged that development would proceed untrammelled; the current structure did allow for checks and balances in the way it worked and it is unclear just what will prevent a growth-obsessed government from approving something which future generations may regret.
What is known is that this is not unfamiliar territory for National: the last public service merger, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, was also its creation.
While MBIE has endured, not everyone thinks that the labyrinthine ministry, which serves 21 portfolios, 19 ministers and two parliamentary under-secretaries, has brought the stated efficiences claimed at its creation.
MCERT will at least have a narrower focus in its favour, rather than the amorphous "supporting business growth" assigned to MBIE.
The government was adamant that this is not another exercise in culling civil servants, although the bland assurance that it does expect "to see efficiencies in the medium to long term" will reassure few of the affected people or their families.
Whether it is an exercise in culling ministers or ministries is another question.
HUD, Transport and Internal Affairs have plenty of other work to be going on with but these reforms suggest an even smaller role for the Ministry for the Environment, an organisation already largely sidelined by the government’s RMA and fast track legislation.
Mr Bishop has said that Environment would supply most of the new ministry’s employees; while he added that the environment underpinned MCERT’s role, it does beg the question of will there be a role for the actual environment ministry?
Speaking of sidelined, it also remains to be seen how this ministry will function alongside councils.
The recent proposals for local government reform intend to diminish its role in planning, and the plan for MCERT to take over the local government functions of Internal Affairs suggests a realignment of how councils will interact with central government.
Even though many questions remain to answered about MCERT — which is expected to up and running by July — the idea of the new ministry, on paper at any rate, seems to have some merit.
Whether MCERT is a dead cert or a racecourse certainty, of course, will depend on whether the planning behind the new organisation proves to have had solid foundations or not.
