Normally the big kahuna of committees, finance and expenditure, gets all the attention - especially in the June scrutiny week, which comes just after the Budget - as it gets to grill the Finance Minister.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford had taken the unusual step of issuing an advisory that she would be holding a press briefing afterwards - a session which, most likely, no-one from the Fourth Estate would have attended otherwise.
Forewarned, there was a healthy audience to hear Ms Stanford outline an extraordinary tale of botched project management by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment over development of a biometric scanning system which was intended to be set up at the nation’s airports but, seven years and $30 million + later, is poised to be scrapped.
Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche, a stony-faced figure at the best of times, looked especially adamantine as later that day he slammed whatever had happened at MBIE as ‘‘completely unacceptable’’ and pledged an investigation into integrity at the ministry.
Even if only a-quarter of what has come out so far is proven to be correct, this ranks as one of New Zealand’s biggest ever public service scandals. Given Sir Brian and Stanford’s demeanours, it seems more likely than not that the initial report provided to the Immigration Minister is only the tip of the iceberg.
If Education and Workforce is one of Parliament’s less exciting committees, it is positively box office compared to Governance and Administration.
To be fair, its meeting the following day might have attracted some interest: it was hearing from Paul Goldsmith, the Public Service Minister, and as part of Budget 2026 the government had quite famously announced it was taking the shears to civil servant numbers.
But sitting alongside was none other than Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche, who would have been under no illusion as to what was to come.
MPs sub in and out from committees with colleagues due to factors such as illness, other duties elsewhere or, in the case of Dunedin Green list MP Francisco Hernandez, portfolio responsibilities.
He is not a member of G&A, but he is his party’s public service spokesman, a job which had overnight become much more significant. But before we got to MBIE, we were going to run through Hernandez’s priority issues first.
Uppermost on his mind was the government’s stated aim of public service being 1% of the population, and whether that was a reasonable ratio? He asked Goldsmith whether or not Christopher Luxon had suggested Singapore’s public service was an example that New Zealand could aspire to?
‘‘He refers to Singapore from time to time,’’ a cautious Goldsmith replied, correctly assuming that this was going somewhere he did not wish to be taken.
‘‘Are you aware that Singapore’s core public service as a percentage of the population is actually 1.4%?’’ Hernandez followed up.
‘‘That may well be the case but what is the point you’re making,’’ Goldsmith replied.
The point was that 1% was an arbitrary target and that if you wanted a Singapore-style public service that you had to resource it accordingly.
‘‘I’m sure that if the Greens had an opportunity it would be 2%,’’ Goldsmith blustered back, before adding that it was obvious to everybody that spending on the public service was too high and had to be reduced.
Hernandez was not finished there though, wanting to know if Goldsmith would guarantee no degradation of front-line services?
Yes he would, when it came to the likes of police, ‘‘but there are, of course, broad discussions about how we can do things more efficiently in a whole host of areas.’’
Hernandez then wanted to know about how AI would be used by the public service in the future, its historic use of social media advertising, record taking and proposed cuts and mergers of government departments and agencies - all worthy topics - before the hearing finally got to the elephant in the select committee room, the ongoing issues at MBIE.
Hernandez got straight to brass tacks and asked if it was within Sir Brian’s powers to lay criminal charges, if warranted?
‘‘I think we should just see what comes out,’’ he replied, ‘‘but when you read that people have been manipulating rules and being altogether too cute in the exercise of their judgement, that is completely unacceptable and it is not the way that the public service in New Zealand operates and we have to hold people to account.’’
