Cabinet authorises release of paper but it's withheld anyway

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Greens co-leader James Shaw meet the media after outlining the Government's priorities. Photo / Greg Bowker

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has outlined the 12 priority areas for the Government to focus on but how they are tracking to date remains a mystery.

Among a tranche of documents proactively released by the Prime Minister's office today, along with her speech notes and a press release on the Government's blueprint for its priorities, were two Cabinet papers.

One, titled Implementing and Monitoring the Government's Priorities, refers a number of times to Appendix A of the document containing the current work programme, including priority portfolio initiatives and indicators for measuring, reporting on and demonstrating progress. It also sets out the Government's achievements to date.

"By tracking and regularly assessing progress against the overall objectives we set ourselves, we will be able to identify the policies that are succeeding, change those that are not working, align our resources with priorities, and get the results we really want for New Zealanders," the paper says.

Ardern, in her speech, said the public would be able to track how its priorities were progressing, and the Cabinet paper says it will have a "transparent approach that allows New Zealanders to see what we are doing to have a real and meaningful impact on the things that matter to them".

Ardern proposed in the paper to regularly publish progress updates setting out what had been achieved, what had changed in key work programmes and why.

"I therefore seek the committee's agreement to release a version of the table at Appendix A that sets out the Government's achievements to date," she said in the paper, dated August 2018.

Cabinet authorised the Prime Minister to release the table, but it was missing from the documents released today.

A spokesperson for Ardern said the appendix was withheld because it contained details of policy not yet signed off by Cabinet. A version of it would be made available to media in "due course".