Editorial: A charmed life

OPINION: As state sector reforms go, what is known of the Government's intention in this area hardly amounts to a massive shake-up.

A number of mergers would end the stand-alone status of several smaller agencies and a productivity commission is likely to run the efficiency ruler over the state sector. But this new focus on the sector emphasises the fact that one agency still leads a charmed life. It is the Families Commission, the most unnecessary of all the social policy agencies.

Prime Minister John Key has ruled out abolishing this $8 million drain on taxpayer resources, but why? For most New Zealanders what this commission does was a mystery when it was set up and it remains so today.

The commission claims that it speaks out for all families to promote a better understanding of family issues. If so, that would be a Herculean feat given the huge diversity of family types in society. In reality individual families have their own aspirations and needs which should be met through specific public agencies and the voluntary sector.

The only reason that the commission will not face the axe is that it was part of the price paid for the support for National of United Future's Peter Dunne. Had this political deal, which is one of the more unsavoury features of MMP, not been done the commission would have been gone by lunch-time.

The mergers being considered by the Government, however, might have merit. With 41 ministries and departments, as well as 84 statutory Crown entities, New Zealand has an abundance of state agencies.

Merging the National Library and National Archives into Internal Affairs, rolling the Food Safety Authority into Agriculture and Forestry, and combining the Foundation for Science, Research and Technology with the ministry with the same name are worth exploring.

There could be savings achieved by avoiding back-room duplication. But it is curious that Cabinet is set to decide on the mergers next week, despite Key reportedly saying that there were not yet figures on savings.

And by Government standards the agencies affected are not large. National Archives and the National Library, for example, have budgets totalling little more than $90m, which suggests that savings would be modest.

More obvious savings measures would be capping the number of officials and insisting that agencies fund new spending by reprioritising current spending, which the Government is already doing.

The Government's proposed new productivity commission to find efficiencies in the state sector appears to be following the lead of Australia, although its commission has a broader brief than just the public service. It is unclear how a commission here would cut across the two current control agencies, Treasury and the State Services Commission, although it might provide a fresh approach to the sector.

And if such a body was to be formed, surely decisions on agency mergers should follow, not precede, its work.

It should not, however, require a productivity commission to find one $8m packet of savings. The Government should acknowledge that the Families Commission is an irrelevance for most New Zealanders and consign it to history, regardless of any political consequences.

- © Fairfax NZ News