Michael Laws: Yes minister, you will do what you're told

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ONE OF the favourite games of Wellington lobbyists is guessing the Achilles' heel of their intended target.

Be they minister or munchkin, prime minister or policy geek, it is the paid occupation of these oleaginous opinion-shapers to find out the strengths and weaknesses of their woo victims.

Their clients and their fees depend upon granting their special interest an especial favour. Whether it's tobacco companies seeking less horrific packaging or the alcohol lobby younger victims, most of the serious players seek expert advice.

They need to know if the direct approach is going to work or the after-hours schmooze. The PA in the short skirt or the gay boy in accounts - what angle should they push to ensure their own?

And yet none of these wide boys and girls, with their fast ways and faster talk, stand a show of influencing the average cabinet minister or politician. The reason they cannot be captured is very simple: they have already been corralled.

Usually by their own underlings the private secretaries and secondments sent by their own departments to sort out the appalling misconceptions that new ministers had in opposition. And lead them back down the path of departmental enlightenment.

Because there are three major parties in New Zealand politics - National, Labour and the civil service. And the civil service is the most powerful, because it is never out of power.

I was reminded of this fact with the release of Treasury's world view - otherwise known as its briefing papers to the incoming minister of finance.

Treasury's basic advice was that the market knows best. Its corollary argument is that New Zealand is a cot-case lazy, inefficient and falling behind.

It has argued such ever since its creation and ever since its leading officers were exposed to Milton Friedman. No matter its recruits liberals, socialists, greenies or geeks they are ultimately absorbed by the collective view that all government intervention is bad. And that New Zealand will not be rescued until their prescriptions are followed.

In essence, the Treasury is the Borg. An unfeeling brain - an intelligence lacking empathy. A collective that eschews individual thought and yet, paradoxically, champions the individual over the state.

Sure enough, their latest briefing portrays Kiwis as a bunch of uneducated slackers, yet yearning to be set free from the twin tyranny of high taxes and government spending. Needless to say, their pragmatist minister has rejected their advice outright.

Especially with regard to emissions trading and water allocation. Treasury has always disliked agriculture and always believed that it should be cut no slack despite it providing the foundation of the New Zealand economy. Rather it believes New Zealand should wander the international world, naked and virtuous, and proclaim such naivete as a beacon to others.

It didn't work in deregulating the Kiwi economy 20 years ago, and it won't work now. But Treasury don't care. It sounds good and it fits their infantile world view that New Zealand is peopled with individuals just like them.

Who just need a bit of a prod, and an honours degree, and they will be right as rain. In Treasury's world, everyone lives in Kelburn and everyone has been to university. In Treasury's world, people make rational choices. In Treasury's world, people have choices and only their own fecklessness halts them from success.

Fortunately, new finance minister Bill English is a bright rural conservative. As his predecessor was a bright urban liberal. Both have rejected Treasury's prescriptions on the basis that they won't work - have never worked anywhere - and lack any true connection to the Kiwi psyche.

But that's also because English has been there, done that and still bears the scars. He was around in the early 1990s when Treasury ran its prescription through Ruth Richardson and almost cost the Nats the 1993 general election.

And this is where John Key may rue allocating some of his key portfolios to ingenues and insiders.

Those most in danger will be those who lack IQ and political experience. It's a big call putting Paula Bennett in charge of social welfare and Anne Tolley in charge of education. They will be the especial prey of their private secretary plotters.

It is an even bigger call placing businessman Steven Joyce in cabinet with no parliamentary experience whatsoever. He will either be incandescent and incinerate his advice, or be last seen flaming over Oriental Parade - there will be no middle course.

And whither Rodney Hide? Promising to slay bureaucracy, slash red tape and reform local government. Not being around the cabinet table, he gives every other minister's department the opportunity to frustrate, delay and negate his every move.

Like rust, New Zealand's civil service never sleeps. And like rust, it silently corrodes ministers' ambitions and aspiration. Forget the global credit crunch: this new government's enemy is already within.