Parliament workplace culture review: Debbie Francis finds MPs lack appetite to improve

Parliament still needs to change, culture review consultant Debbie Francis says. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Parliament has made some big steps forward since a damning conduct and culture review in 2019, but significant problems, including staff feeling unable to speak up, persist.

Those problems require fundamental change, which few have the appetite for, particularly MPs.

That’s the verdict of Debbie Francis, the consultant who conducted the original review, and who returned to Parliament to check up on progress this year.

Francis warned that the gains that had been made were largely as a result of the efforts of individual people and parties, and might not survive once those people moved on to other work.

Francis’ findings, published on Friday, said Parliament required “transformative” change to the way its unusual operating model. The current model fuses some aspects of the modern workplace, with the ancient traditions of a Westminster-style Parliament and emerges with an unusual power structure spread across MPs, parties, and Parliament itself.

But this change seems unlike, Francis saying “the appetite does not presently exist for such a transformative approach, particularly amongst elected members”.

She said this “hesitancy reflects both party differences and current fiscal pressures”.

“Executing a new model would require an additional investment into Parliamentary operations – in the form of increased agency baselines – that elected members have resisted making in recent years, in spite of several reports recommending changes”.

She wrote that it may take a “crisis or a significantly improved fiscal outlook to trigger the transformative operating model change that I believe is really needed”.

Francis found there was still a reluctance to lay a formal complaint against bosses, including MPs and ministers, a topic that has emerged recently in regard to Cabinet Minister Kiri Allan when it was revealed several staff had problems working in Allan’s office but no formal complaints were ever laid.

“Almost no one in a ministerial context in particular, will want to make a formal complaint, given the high stakes nature of the enterprise and the risks of traumatisation via media or a formal investigation. Agencies need the confidence and skills to examine latent issues by examining data from multiple sources,” Francis found.

Francis took particular issue with Parliament’s employment structure and its competing poles of Parliament, party, and MPs.

She would prefer to see MPs effectively the “customer” of a centrally managed staffing service, shifting the balance of power away from MPs towards Parliament.

Former National MP Jami-Lee Ross. Photo / RNZ, Simon Rogers

Francis’ original review began in 2018, and came hot on the heels of allegations of bullying behaviour against Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross.

Ross denied acting inappropriately, but the incident sparked a reckoning around the power imbalances in the Parliamentary workplace.

The most recent review was different to Francis’ original inquiry. She described it as “a point-in-time snapshot of the current workplace culture, as described to me in focus groups and interviews with staff, managers, members of parliament, ministers and party leaders”.

“Unlike the previous, months-long exercise, I did not use a retrospective timeframe, nor invite public submissions,” she said.

Despite her calls for transformative change, Francis found the workplace had improved a lot.

“Without wishing to minimise anyone’s pain, the matters raised with me in this second review also tended to be more frustrating than egregious. Many appeared to be more the result of underdeveloped management skills than of malicious conduct,” she wrote.

However, Francis cautioned these gains had “often been made in spite of the underlying workforce operating model, rather than because of it”.

‘They have required clever workarounds of the rules, sometimes heroic personal interventions to solve systemic issues, and leaders and staff going the extra mile” she said.

“Some improvements, particularly those that relate to the below-the-waterline aspects of culture, are not likely to be sustainable with changes in key personnel. In my view, the current operating model, while it might have served Parliaments of the past, is not fit for the future,” she said.

Speaker Adrian Rurawhe said: “Together, we have made great strides in our commitments to improve workplace culture. It is a journey that we will continue to move forward with.

“We expect that the guidance and the opportunities represented in the report steer us to deliver even greater progress in our journey to strengthen the parliamentary culture,” he said.