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Speaker 1: The Seymour idea to slash cabinet and government departments is

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Speaker 1: the government's third best idea of the week. I think

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Speaker 1: too many departments, too many portfolios, an awful lot of

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Speaker 1: meaningless titles, eighty two ministerial portfolios, twenty eight ministers, forty

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Speaker 1: one separate government departments. Now, the New Zealand Initiative Executive

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Speaker 1: Director Oliver Hartwitch is with us on this very good

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Speaker 1: morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning Mike.

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Speaker 1: Seeing from your work you tell us that MB report

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Speaker 1: to nineteen different ministers. How mad is that? They must

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Speaker 1: know that's mad, mustn't they?

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Speaker 2: Of course, I mean it's completely mad. We have more ministers,

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Speaker 2: of course in charge of MB than Ireland has in

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Speaker 2: its entire cabinets. So we can see the magistrate there.

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Speaker 1: In looking at Ireland or Norway, do we want to

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Speaker 1: improve or is this just comfortable to run a whole

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Speaker 1: lot of people, give them a whole lot of jobs

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Speaker 1: and you can appease a whole lot of egos.

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Speaker 2: No, we want to be more like Norway. We want

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Speaker 2: to be more like Ireland or indeed many other countries

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Speaker 2: around the world. In fact, I don't know any country,

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Speaker 2: maybe Australia that runs its government. Like New Zealand, we

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Speaker 2: have really created something special here, but it doesn't work

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Speaker 2: when you look at Norway, for example, you have one

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Speaker 2: minister for one government department in charge of one minister

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Speaker 2: at portfolio and it works. In New Zealand. Of course

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Speaker 2: we split all sorts of things just for the sake

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Speaker 2: of actually creating some portfolios, keeping some politicians happy, making

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Speaker 2: sure the coalition partner is happy. But the result of

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Speaker 2: that is something that doesn't make sense. For example, we

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Speaker 2: have a Minister of Housing, but we also have a

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Speaker 2: Minister of Building and Construction. These are two different people,

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Speaker 2: as if these two issues wouldn't have anything to do

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Speaker 2: with each other. Or if you're serving in the armed forces,

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Speaker 2: your minister Sturis Collins as a defense minister. Once you

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Speaker 2: retire from the armed forces, your minister is Chris pank

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Speaker 2: because that's veterans' affairs. And so we split all these

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Speaker 2: different things into micro portfolios to the point doesn't make

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Speaker 2: any sense. And finally, the current governments of course created

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Speaker 2: more portfolios in the reshuffle we had earlier this year.

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Speaker 2: So now we have an economic growth portfolio put yourself

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Speaker 2: by the Minister of Finance whose responsibility economic growth force

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Speaker 2: in the first place, so it doesn't makes sense.

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Speaker 1: Anything to do with MMP. In other words, because of

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Speaker 1: the electoral system, we need more people.

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Speaker 2: A little bit to do with MMP, because of course

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Speaker 2: nowadays we have a lot of coalition negotiations and it

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Speaker 2: makes it just an attractive option to create more micro

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Speaker 2: portfolios to keep the coalition partner happy. But then again,

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Speaker 2: if you go through the history, you can see that

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Speaker 2: the trend towards more ministery or portfolios started before we

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Speaker 2: even got MMP.

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Speaker 1: Here's your real problem though, not only a number of portfolios,

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Speaker 1: but talent. The more portfolios you have, the more people involve,

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Speaker 1: the more people involved, you're stretching your talent, Paul, aren't

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Speaker 1: you exactly?

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Speaker 2: And I think actually you shouldn't need more than fifteen,

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Speaker 2: maybe twenty minutesters. I've heard Ruth Richardson actually recently saying

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Speaker 2: she thinks he could do with twelve, and I think

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Speaker 2: she's got a point. Currently we've got under thirty, and

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Speaker 2: I think that's way too many.

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Speaker 1: Good on you, Oliver, and you have a good week.

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Speaker 1: You appreciate it. Oliver Heartwood Jaener The New Zealand Initiative

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Speaker 1: as I said at the start of the show, if

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Speaker 1: Seymour can pull this off, he's about to become Deputy

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Speaker 1: Prime Minister. I don't know that necessarily means anything, but

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Speaker 1: if he can pull this off, he deserves a medal,

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Speaker 1: if not beatification. For more from The Mic Asking Breakfast,

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Speaker 1: listen live to News Talks at B from six am weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.