Locke Keith: Urgent Debates — Environment Ministry—State Services Commission Briefing 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Urgent Debates — Environment Ministry—State Services Commission Briefing 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2007. Volume:640;Page:10620. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party welcomes this debate because we think that every now and again it is important that the House has a debate on the nature of the Civil Service and that we reinforce the fact that the Civil Service should be strong and independent and be a place where people are professionals who have careers and serve their country without fear of political persecution and without fear of being sacked for things that are not of their making which is what has happened in this case.  
Public servants should not be subject to the sorts of political pressures that Madeleine Setchell has been under. I think we have to trust the integrity of our public servants. That is the key to the functioning of our governmental apparatus and we should judge our public servants on the basis of their own abilities and professionalism. When they are on a career path there is plenty of opportunity over the years—and through their CVs references and everything else—to judge their professionalism on the job and whether they would be some sort of political leaker. Very few public servants in my experience are of a character that means they would run out and politically leak information to some other party.  
 From what has gone on so far it is quite apparent that Madeleine Setchell was the most qualified applicant for the job. In all of the commentary I have seen so far there has been no question about that. She was also open about her relationship with Kevin Taylor who is John Key’s chief press secretary. So it was quite wrong to sack her later on without there being any good reason for doing so that we can see other than the fact that she has a relationship with Kevin Taylor.  
Of course in any partnership situation there is a security risk if one of the parties has access to confidential information and may disclose it to the other party. But in reality in my experience when there is that sort of conflict within a household both partners are quite scrupulous to prevent leaks for the obvious reason that they would be the first to get the blame for any leak. If there had been a leak from the Ministry for the Environment who would have been the first to get the blame? It would have been Madeleine Setchell so she and other people in her position very much protect confidential information and their independence because they do not want to be accused if something happens in the department they work for.  
There is a whole history to this issue. It is ironic that the State Services Commission has gone along with the current sacking and seems to be justifying it when the head of that same commission Mark Prebble has had very senior positions in the Government including one at the top of the Prime Minister’s department at the same time that his brother was the leader of the ACT party which is obviously a party that was rather antagonistic to Labour through that whole period. But Mark Prebble’s professionalism was trusted during that whole period and rightly so.  
I do not want to get into an interpretation of who made a phone call to whom and of how much David Benson-Pope knew; other speakers in this debate are traversing that topic and it was traversed in question time today. I want to deal with the problem that arises out of this case for public servants. All over Wellington in particular and more broadly all over New Zealand public servants will be worried about the sacking of Madeleine Setchell and what is happening here. That is the problem. In hundreds of relationships involving public servants—maybe even thousands—there are conflicts of interest.  
One just needs to look at Steve Hurring himself the person who made the phone call to the Ministry for the Environment. As I understand it from the media he is in a relationship with Helen Kelly the incoming President of the Council of Trade Unions. One might ask where the conflict of interest is there and it is perhaps not a major one. But in fact if the Ministry for the Environment had a particular stance on the pay rises or conditions of employment to give to public servants in that ministry Steve Hurring might be privy to that information. It might be of use to the Public Service Association (PSA) to know that confidential information and the Council of Trade Unions might be involved in working with the PSA on its wage claim and the progress of it. So there is potentially a conflict of interest there too as there is across Wellington. But I would not for a moment think that Steve Hurring would break confidentiality and tell Helen Kelly something or vice versa—that a conflict of interest would come out in practice.  
There are hundreds of other examples of potential conflicts of interest. When Don Brash came into this Parliament and became the leader of the National Party Je Lan his wife was in the Cabinet Office. So I find it upsetting that Madeleine Setchell has been sacked in this situation; that will frighten a lot of public servants.  
Potential conflicts of interest can affect people’s personal relations in a broader sense too. One of the things that happens around New Zealand—around Wellington Auckland and Christchurch in particular—in areas where there are a lot of public servants is that there is a lot of mixing at social functions and everywhere else. That obviously produces some longer-term relationships. There is an interchange of ideas and views and people speak quite openly though not in respect of confidential information. We are not like some bigger countries where people tend to talk only to those who agree with them. In social situations in our smaller country as in Auckland and Wellington one talks to a lot of people with whom one disagrees and that cross-fertilisation of ideas is good for our democracy good for our politics good for our civil society as a whole and beyond that good for the Government. We do not want to interrupt that process. We do not want people to fear talking to a person for too long if he or she is in the Green Party or the National Party or to not go out with a person who is very active in the National Party and may become an MP because to do so may affect their Civil Service careers.  
If people start to think like that and start to worry about their relationships in those terms that will dampen the civil society we want to build. The next thing will be that the State Services Commission issues guidelines on whom people should sleep with or marry if they are to advance their job future in the public sector. That of course may be taking things to the extreme but there are elements of truth in that.  
The mixing up of party politics into the Civil Service in the way that has been done could also lead to biases in our media too because many people our press gallery people like Kevin Taylor himself go on to become press secretaries for Ministers or politicians. In my experience Kevin was a very good and very independent reporter for the  
New Zealand Herald  
when he was there; I certainly did not pick any National Party politics in his reporting. I am not sure whether he is aligned personally to the National Party; he is doing a professional job for the leader of the National Party at the present time. If we suddenly start to define journalists’ political relationships as being important and that mucks up the future career of their partners we may get journalists starting to write more pro-Labour pro-National or pro-Green articles if they see their future as being a press secretary for a Labour National or Green Cabinet Minister. That would start to muddy up the whole situation and it would remove from New Zealand its very creditable tradition of having an independent Civil Service with independent advisers and with people being chosen for their skills and their abilities. That is what the Greens are very strong about and that is why we are so worried about the sacking that has taken place over the last week. Thank you.