The Labour Party stuffed up the country for six years. Now the Nats have thrown into the "too hard basket" matters like legislation to clarify the Treaty, health-care, and dealing with monopoly power rife across banking, food, air-travel and construction. Somewhere along the line both parties have decided to delegate solving NZ's problems. It's beyond the powers of the PM, Leader of Opposition, Finance Minister & Shadow Finance Minister, combined with their fellow MPs, to come up with useful solutions. So they've asked State Services Commissioner to put out a job advert for a new Chief Executive (or Secretary) of the NZ Treasury, the last one being such a non-entity that barely anyone even knew her name (whoever she was has departed to do auditing back in Australia, from where she came). What is the prospective new NZ Treasury CEO tasked with doing? Nothing less than being a "thought leader" who will "lead & drive the Government’s economic agenda". It gets better. You will be required to rise to "a challenge" that "awaits you" as next Secretary. It is to "turn around NZ’s economy". In order to do so you must be a "change agent".
The pay is the same as former Finance Minister Grant Robertson's as Vice Chancellor of Otago University - around $630,000. Given Robertson's main task is to call up his mates in Wellington to stop Waikato getting a new medical school so Otago can retain its monopoly over training doctors, his VC job may have more going for it, especially if life-style & hanging out again in the student pubs you used to frequent when you were 20 years old is your thing. But if you're on for being Treasury CEO and single-handedly working out why productivity is low in NZ (another job requirement) and "turning around" the nation, then go for the Treasury job. I mean, how hard can solving all NZ problems be and correcting the mistakes of six years of Ardern & Hipkins, and now telling Nicola Willis what to do to make her look good, all whilst the MPs who were voted in to do that job do everything else but?
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