Goff Phil: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1808. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 I want to focus today on the botched job that this Government has done in cutting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and supposedly reforming it but in the process destroying it. It is a little bit like the Viet Nam War slogan “We had to destroy the village to save it.” Well they have destroyed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. If anyone is in any doubt about that or thinks that that is hyperbole have a look at what the 49 top diplomats in New Zealand the heads of mission had to say to their own ministry about what the impact of those restructuring reforms has been on the ministry. One thing that stands out above anything else is the huge damage done in demoralising and disillusioning the people who work for one of our finest ministries. I can say that with some passion because I have worked with them for 9 years and John Hayes can agree because he worked for them as an employee for a lot longer.  
You know we are a little country we cannot bully our way in the world. We certainly cannot bribe others to make them do what we want them to do so what do we rely on? We rely on the innate skill and ability of the most talented people we can find in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. When I became Minister in 2000 I read a great article in the  
International Herald Tribune 
 that said that our ministry was tiny but it outperformed a neighbour five times our size in every category.  
I have always thought that there is a lot of truth in the old saying “If it works don’t fix it”. They have fixed it all right! They started off in September last year doing an independent review and what did that review find? It found that the ministry was able to obtain and retain talented and committed individuals. It found that it had a distinctive professional diplomatic culture that delivered some remarkable successes. Who said that? It was the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Treasury and the State Services Commission.  
What has been the result of this botched reform effort? First of all we have lost some of our best people in the ministry. Crawford Falconer who would outperform any other trade negotiator in the world the former chair of the agriculture committee at the World Trade Organization—gone. Nigel Fyfe the head of the trade negotiations division a very competent ambassador in Chile and a really competent trade negotiator—gone. What I find when I talk to any of my contacts in foreign affairs is that they are either putting their notice in or they are getting their references ready to put their notice in. They are leaving in their droves and it is the best the brightest the most talented and therefore the most mobile who are going and that is the achievement of Murray McCully.  
What does Murray McCully say in response to this? He knows that it was botched. They are now back-pedalling so fast it is hard to know where they are going to end up. But he says that it is all the fault of the Foreign Secretary Mr Allen. Mr Allen is a civil servant. He was actually plucked out of the private sector by Murray McCully to cut the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and restructure it. But there is this about a chief executive officer: he cannot answer back to lies and criticisms made about him by a Minister. He is defenceless. I cannot remember a time in 30 years Mr Chairman—and nor can you—when a Minister blamed his civil servant in a way that he knew that that civil servant could not fight back. But the ministry answered that. They said that it was the Minister who appointed John Allen and it was the Minister who set the directions and it was the Minister who gave constant oversight. He cannot help himself—he is a micro-manager. Murray McCully is responsible for this and no matter how much he hides behind blaming his chief executive for the botch-up he is responsible and he needs to go.  
Jenny Shipley decided that in 1999 when she sacked him as Minister of Tourism. She sacked him because of his inappropriate interference in the running of the Ministry of Tourism. He did it then and he is doing it now and what upsets me and makes me passionate about this is that he is destroying an agency that has worked professionally capably and competently to serve the interests of our country. We should be proud of that ministry. It has fine people and now they are falling over each other to go because they see that they have no future in that ministry. It is a shocking disgrace what has happened and it is unprecedented that the 49 heads of mission would actually come out and say that what is happening to their ministry is destroying it. It is taking away its fundamental strengths. It is a shame that it has come to that and Murray McCully is to blame.