The House: Learning on the (ministerial) job

Source: Radio New Zealand

When there is a Cabinet reshuffle, I tend to feel a little sorry for fresh ministers who get elevated up the rankings and landed with a big new job, or three.

A new ministry to run may be a dream realised. But for an MP who is conscientious or self-aware, it’s surely also a terrifying responsibility. So, how do they manage that transition, and how are ministers assisted and guided into their new roles?

The House asked a newish minister, recently further elevated, who has a reputation for being both competent and conscientious. Here is the edited conversation.

Chris Penk (National, MP for Kaipara ki Maharangi), is Minister of Defence, Space, the GCSB and SIS, Building and Construction, Veterans, and Associate Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery. He admits it’s a lot but professes to “enjoy it all”.

Learning on the job

How did you transition to becoming a minister?

A certain amount of it is learning on the job. For a very new member of Parliament becoming a minister probably is a challenge because they are learning two new jobs all at once.

Operating in Parliament, you’re aware of what ministers do, and you’re aware of the need for different skills, knowledge, and experience that you simply don’t have to have until such time as you reach that particular role.

As an MP, you’re contributing but you’re not really in charge of anything.

The reality is, it’s not the case that you’re making decisions on an individual basis as an MP. However, as a minister, there are decisions you make. Yes, government decisions are made almost by definition with Cabinet collective responsibility, but you propose things as a minister to your ministerial colleagues. (You don’t always get them across the line, by the way). And then there are statutory powers that the minister has to make in a particular area.

[Note: Legislation often delegates ongoing powers and specific decisions to individual ministers.]

A lot of people come to Parliament having never really been the boss of anything. You were a partner in a law firm and you’d been an officer in the Navy.

I’d been in charge of a couple of quite small teams, and so I had at least that experience, and whereas some people come to this place without having been in a leadership role and possibly find it difficult when they are asked to make a decision and every eye around the table is on you, waiting for you to pronounce as to your decision.

Conversely, colleagues who come in who have been used to being in decision-making roles, and [then] they don’t get much decision-making power, at least until they become a minister.

So when you became a minister you have to learn a lot of new rules before you actually have an enormous stack of papers land on your desk.

The papers come pretty well from day one. But yes, the briefings do as well, in terms of how to conduct your role. And some of it is just the mechanics of what the Cabinet Manual says about, you know, decision making, disclosures of interest, different rules for declaring gifts.

So, the rules of the game are different and you do need to get your head around that, but you also have to move very quickly to be able to do your job from day one. So the information flows, the decisions are needed.

[It can be much harder] if there’s a change of government. Inevitably, you have a large number of new ministers, and [issues requiring decisions will have built up], and suddenly you’re right in the deep end.

You would have a lot of decisions to make all at once and a lot of catching up to do, and a whole lot of people who maybe hadn’t done it before, and so no one much to mentor you either.

Usually, even in a new government, there will be some colleagues who have been ministers before. Coming in 2023, we had the benefit of former ministers from previous National administrations to talk to the new National ministers about how things work, and we had the ability to ask any [political] questions that wouldn’t have been appropriate [to ask] of the Cabinet Office.

You were already busy with building and construction, and veterans. But you’ve added a stack of extra portfolios. What happens when you take on new roles? Are there briefings, people to meet, places to visit? How do you get your head around it?

You do have to prioritise a bit. The inevitable elements are a BIM (Briefing to Incoming Minister) for each new portfolio, even if you’re transitioning from associate minister to minister.

The BIM sets out what’s within your control from a government point of view, but also the state of the sector more generally. In defence that was pointing out the shape of the Defence Force, the state of that, and also an update of upcoming decisions needed to keep the show on the road.

Also there’s the outside world in which one interacts. For example in building and construction, there are a couple of government-adjacent bodies, but also there’s a whole private sector of builders and other tradies who you need to be interacting with. Otherwise you can get the view only from the Beehive and not out in the real world. So all that is necessary as quickly as possible coming into a new role.

The team, the ministry, and the papers

We’re in your office in the Beehive. People might picture a vast team of helpers guiding you. But you haven’t got a big team, have you? Ministerial offices are small, especially as an international comparison.

Yeah, I think we’ve got a team that is appropriately small on the political side of things, so to speak. So in my role, I have one press secretary, one ministerial advisor, an SPS (someone who runs the office) and one person on the front desk. Between us, we do a lot.

There are the agencies or ministries themselves, but crucially, there’s a role which is halfway-between, which is what we call a private secretary, but you might call a secondi, or from a Defence point of view, they call a mil-sec (Military Secretary). That’s someone who comes from their agency to work in your ministerial office in the Beehive, and they provide a vital link between the agency and the minister and his or her team.

Yeah, a minister will have two or three of them for each of the departments or ministries or groups that they’re responsible for, right?

I’ve usually had only one private secretary for each of my portfolios until now. I’ve got one in the building and construction portfolio, but there are more in defence because they cover the Defence Force itself, also there’s Veterans (with different responsibilities and a lot of different work that needs to be done there), and there’s the Ministry of Defence, which is different again.

Those people help keep you apprised, but when the people with lots of brass on their shoulders turned up for meetings you must have felt a bit like a wee hamster; desperately sprinting, trying not to be the only guy in the room that didn’t know what was going on.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s literally the top brass in the room when it comes to defence.

[I have] a little bit of a defence background, but seeing these very senior figures coming in, it is an interesting, different way to operate and it’s very humbling to be their champion inside the Beehive and to be responsible for getting across the line, the things that they need to do their job safely and well.

You end up inevitably working closely with people, and the degree of trust personally between chief executives and ministers, I think, is really important if you’re to be successful in your role.

They run the department, and you are their champion, their front person, in a governorship role, right?

That’s right, but also you have to avoid appearing as though you’re captured [co-opted], and of course, avoid actually being captured. It’s not my role simply to do the things [an agency] wants to be done; but to understand, respect and acknowledge the importance of the work they do, and to represent that well, and to go into bat for them (consistent with the government’s aims), is the balance that every minister needs to try to strike.

Every ministry has a list of things they desperately want. But you’re between that rock and the hard place (the finance minister). You have to make difficult calls, I suppose.

It can seem very much like that. A classic of the genre, of course, is Yes Minister, or for modern audiences, Utopia is a brilliant documentary (as opposed to comedy). Just to echo that famous characterisation. But I think, all satire aside, I think there’s a genuine but healthy tension that needs to be struck between the … public sector … on the one hand, and the elected members of the Government.

The continuity and the stewardship of the public sector functions are important, but at the same time it’s important that the minister is able to represent not only the wishes of the government, but the people of New Zealand.

Ministries give their ministers copious briefings. How do you stay afloat? [Lists of ministerial briefings are often proactively released. The most recent examples from Defence include a very busy May 2024.]

Yeah, there’s a huge amount of information. The trick is to understand what’s most important; and to weigh that which is urgent with that which is important. Part of that is just judgement that you develop.

I think also you need a degree of trust in the government agencies, and in your staff, to highlight the things that are most worthy of your limited attention. But also, if you’ve got background or experience in a particular area, then you can make some of those value judgements yourself.

Having been a lawyer and also a naval officer, there are aspects of the role on which I’ve got a bit of a head start. I speak the language to some extent. I don’t know some other areas of the Defence Force so well, but then again, in my day job as MP for Kaipara ki Maharangi, the Whenuapai Airbase is within that so I’ve had a bit of interaction with the Air Force over time. So it’s all grist to the mill.

But on the other hand, coming into an area fresh, sometimes enables you to ask questions as an outsider with fresh eyes in a way that actually is helpful and quite healthy.

The fuller, audio version of this conversation is available at the link near the top of the article.

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