Political interference means they must not only deal with that daunting task but chase other objectives that may conflict with it. Robertson's latest letter as shareholding minister of Air New Zealand certainly creates some conflicts.
The letter asks that Air New Zealand, inter alia "be a 'national airline' continuing in operation to support economic development, including access to international markets… maintain a comprehensive domestic route network… in a timely fashion at a reasonable cost… demonstrate its commitment to environmental sustainability, including engaging with the development of new aviation fuels for New Zealand… enhance its role as a leader for best practice workplace relations."
They must also "continue acting as a responsible corporate citizen and, best of all: achieve these objectives while operating as a commercially sustainable and capital-efficient business."
I asked the Speaker of Parliament to urgently debate this letter. It is not just Air New Zealand, I reasoned, but all SOE boards that may be put in an invidious position by a letter for the Government. The Speaker obliged but the Minister, when criticised, resorted to an attack line of "you don't know how to run a business, of course the shareholder can tell businesses it owns how they should operate".
But the letter went further than its predecessors when it said that "The Government, as majority shareholder, expects to be involved in the process that will lead to Board renewal."
This was different from the 2018 version of the same letter that said the Government would not put forward its own candidates and would not usually interfere in the Board's appointments.
The Minister may be right at the most basic level that it's 'his' airline as the shareholding Minister, and therefore he makes the rules. That's not the same as any intervention he makes being in the best interests of the airline or the real shareholders, a combination of taxpayers represented by him and private holders of Air New Zealand shares.
The list of objectives in the letter are almost certainly impossible, but the real worry is the Government's overall direction of travel towards the centralisation of power.
Robertson in particular seems to have adopted a touch of the Michael Cullen temperament, summed up by the latter's infamous quote "we won, you lost, eat that".
This Government's Reserve Bank Act reforms are another example of it centralising decision-making. The layers of separation between those making technical decisions according to market conditions were, at the very least, thinned when the Government strengthened its powers of appointment, including one of its representatives, from Treasury, be placed on the Monetary Policy Committee.
More generally, the Government's attempts to centrally control markets risk having real consequences for the people of New Zealand, and ultimately political blowback for them.
Energy markets are a good example. When the Government bans energy sources at a whim, introduces a Zero Carbon Act that allows a minister to ration emissions sector by sector, then wonders aloud about building a massive and commercially unviable pumped hydro facility, people become what you might call "investment hesitant".
Sometimes it is worth going back to first principles, and borrowing a little Hayek (not the actress). Our prosperity rests on unleashing creative powers of a free society.
That means people are able to bring the knowledge available to them to bear on the decisions they make to solve the problems they face.
It requires people acting under a rule of law that protects their decision rights in a defined sphere where they are able to act without fear of arbitrary coercion by another or others. Hayek's original acolytes, in the 1980s, were responding to Muldoon's constant puncturing of nearly everyone else's spheres.
They put in place a structure of rules to protect private planning against its more politicised and myopic version, central planning.
It's time to take the whiskey bottle away before this party goes awry.
● David Seymour is leader of the Act Party.
