Erica Stanford, Simeon Brown and the principles of good government – Simon Wilson

Erica Stanford knows what she wants and what the obstacles are and how to get past them. And she’s not wasting a dead second in doing it. Pictured with Christopher Luxon in October last year. Photo / Jason Oxenham

THREE KEY FACTS:

• The Government’s ban on cellphones in schools began at the start of this term.
• In last month’s Budget $67 million was earmarked to transform how our children learn to read.
• A Ministerial Advisory Group report has recommended grammar and handwriting lessons, including cursive handwriting, in primary schools and called for every child to have their own desk and chair.

Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.

OPINION

Erica Stanford and Shane Reti shared a stage earlier this year, at the National Party’s northern region conference. What they said couldn’t have been more contrasting.

Stanford, the Minister of Education, ran through the interventions she’s making in the life of the classroom. At least an hour each of reading, writing and maths, a “knowledge-rich curriculum”, “evidence-based instruction”, twice-yearly testing using “existing testing tools”, all focused on producing a “workforce for the future”.

No mobile phones. And the structured literacy programme will be ready for action by 2025. Big list.

Stanford is the very model of a minister who spent her time in opposition training for the moment. She knows her subject. She knows what she wants and what the obstacles are and how to get past them. And she’s not wasting a dead second in doing it.

Her predecessors in the job, especially Chris Hipkins, should be taking notes. So should everyone in Parliament. She’s the Minister of Getting Things Done.

And she’s driving it all personally, with the help of one or two key staffers in her office. Stanford is also the Minister from Central Command. She decides, she commands.

Her mentor, Murray McCully, whom she succeeded as MP for East Coast Bays, was said to be the same.

For an alternative view: Will NZ’s school phone ban work? Let’s see what it does for students’ curiosity

After she’d spoken, Reti took his turn.

The Minister of Health told delegates the problem with Government is that it’s motivated by the “bad idea” that “Wellington knows best”. He was handing power back to the local level, to hospitals and re-established local administrations.

“We want to return decision-making to local communities,” he said. “That’s what we’re all about.”

Is it? Despite their 180 degree-difference on this, both the ministers on that stage kept straight faces throughout.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Education Minister Erica Stanford on a school visit last year. Photo / Jason Dorday

Reti was singing from the song-sheet of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who declared last year, “Centralism over localism doesn’t work”. He described it as “a robbery of power and control from local communities”.

I bet he’s never said that to Stanford, though. And as she herself told the conference, the cellphone ban in schools was Luxon’s idea. Like her, he’s perfectly happy to tell schools how to manage things when it suits him.

Hypocrisy? Opportunism? Is the Government committed to localism or not? Does it even matter?

Luxon is right, localism is a valuable operating principle. The people most affected by decisions should be close to the decision-making.

But it’s only valuable until it’s not. Often, as Stanford demonstrates, other principles of good government become more valuable.

One is that policy should be based on evidence-based analysis. Another is that you should never be too snooty-nosed about your “principles” to do what works.

A third is that the buck stops with the minister. If there’s a problem the existing system is not fixing, or perhaps even making worse, it’s your job to fix it.

Stanford might turn out to be wrong about phones in schools, or how kids should learn to read. There may also be some colossal battles to come about the curriculum, and that makes me anxious.

But her policies on phones and reading are backed by credible evidence to suggest she could be right. They’re at least worth trialling.

Stanford also says she’s committed to another principle of good government: she wants to measure the outcomes. In fact, she says there will be a “massive overhaul” to make that happen. That’s good too.

As for Reti, he said an interesting thing at that conference about localism. Māori health organisations, he claimed, are “very excited” about his plans for Māori healthcare. “And a large part of it is mana motuhake.”

Mana motuhake translates as self-determination or autonomous decision-making with control of resources. Better known these days as co-governance.

Let’s see where that goes.

Health Minister Shane Reti speaks to the media earlier this month. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Meanwhile, Stanford’s decision-making principles raise questions about some of her other National Party colleagues around the Cabinet table.

The Fast-track Approvals Bill, funding for cancer drugs, there’s much that springs to mind. And how does Stanford find a civil word to say to Minister of Transport Simeon Brown?

His Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Transport says the primary goal is to help “Kiwis get to where they need to go, quickly and safely”. That is, efficiency. But transport analysts around the country have been trying to square this with the spending commitments in the GPS, because they don’t match up.

As I’ve written before, the GPS is likely to make transportation less efficient and less safe. As for reducing carbon emissions, that hardly gets a look in.

The same analysts have also been trying to square the GPS with their own organisations’ policies, because often they don’t match up either.

In one recent example, Auckland Transport (AT) chair Richard Leggat spelled out the problem to a meeting of Auckland Council.

“We have a hierarchy of needs,” he explained. “Maintain, optimise, grow, new.”

That is, make the most of what you have before deciding you need expensive new projects. This is Mayor Wayne Brown’s approach, too.

“But that’s not the hierarchy of the GPS,” Leggat said. “Where 100 is marginal and 1 is the best possible business case, roads rated 100 get funded, but public transport has to be lower than 10.”

The reason the business case for public transport is high is that almost every passenger on a train, bus or ferry means one less car on the road.

The new chair of Auckland Transport, Richard Leggat. Photo / Supplied

As has been proved in Auckland with the Northern Busway and many other expanded bus and train services, public transport is the most efficient way to manage congestion on the roads. And giving buses priority is the way to make bus travel efficient too.

At the council meeting, AT executive Hamish Bunn elaborated: “In rating the value of projects, public transport sits at the top, then active [cycling and walking], then local roads, then state highways. But that’s the reverse of the GPS. Public transport is probably at the highest risk of not receiving funding, whereas even low-priority highways are likely to receive funding.”

And the GPS adds injury to passengers’ wallets to its insults to good planning, by proposing higher fares.

“It seems,” said Councillor Richard Hills, “like a significant gutting of our public transport programme.”

AT is currently working on a new draft Regional Land Transport Programme (RLTP), which is essentially a series of project funding applications to central Government. It’s hearing public submissions over the next two days (they’re being streamed online) and must submit to government by September 1.

The RLTP is a statutory document. By law, it is required to show how the goals of the GPS can be reflected in the work programme of the transport agencies, as guided by the GPS. But that’s now a contradiction in terms.

“Does it have to be consistent with the GPS?” asked Councillor Shane Henderson, to considerable laughter.

“That’s the challenge,” said Bunn. “We want the RLTP to be quite biddy, but we want to get our priorities in.”

He meant that if AT wants its funding bids to be taken seriously (“be quite biddy”), they should comply with the GPS. But AT also wants to get things done.

As well as all this, National’s coalition agreement with Act says policy will adhere to “problem definition, rigorous cost-benefit analysis and economic efficiency”.

But the GPS doesn’t stick to any of them. Nor is it based on evidence of what works. And it certainly doesn’t respect local decision-making.

Transport Minister Simeon Brown. Photo / RNZ / Angus Dreaver

When Stanford has a spare moment, perhaps she could sit down with Simeon Brown. Take his phone off him, because his socials are obviously filled with trolls outraged by the dreaded “War on Cars”. Give him a bit of structured learning about how to make good policy.

Might be an uphill battle, though. Brown got whoops and hollas from conference delegates when he made the manifestly absurd comment that “everyone has to drive at 30km/h”. Luxon even called him “the great Simeon Brown”.

It’s policy by the apoplexy of social media. Perhaps they should all have their phones taken off them.

As for Luxon himself, instead of complaining about business “C-listers” on Prime Ministerial trips abroad, what’s he got to say about the supposed A-listers at Fonterra?

They’re abandoning their value brands and retrenching into commodity sales. That trashes everything we’ve been told, for decades, about the vital importance of value-added exports to the economic prosperity of this country.

If the PM wants to lead a government of principle and purpose, why doesn’t he call them out?