What on Earth does Shane Jones think he is doing in declaring that highly-partisan Cabinet ministers like himself should be the ones choosing who will run government departments, rather than the independent State Services Commission?
The one-time Labour MP, who is becoming the public face of New Zealand First in the frequent absence overseas of Winston Peters in his capacity of foreign minister, has yet to provide a good reason why such a radical change is required to the long-accepted process by which the country's top public servants are appointed to the most senior positions in the Wellington-based bureaucracy.
Jones' gripe is that the Government's landmark $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund which is tasked with reinvigorating depressed regional economies is being nobbled by red tape and bureaucratic inertia.
Jones wants to have the flexibility to replace top-echelon bureaucrats with no-nonsense appointees from the private sector who have a track record of "getting things done".
He is apparently enamoured with Australia's tradition which sees many chief executives turfed out of their jobs following the election of a new government.
But Jones has got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Such clean-outs don't enhance political neutrality. Depending on the replacements, they can end up only weakening it even further.
Jones' denunciation of senior public servants who cannot answer back is little short of despicable.
No politician has ever lost votes by attacking public servants, however. Just as no politician has ever lost votes by getting stuck into Air New Zealand.
Jones' selection of such easy targets suggests the feigned wrath of Minister of Regional Economic Development has a lot more to do with self-promotion than anything else.
To be fair to him, he now carries a huge and increasingly intolerable political burden.
New Zealand First's survival at the 2020 general election will not hinge on Peters’ handling of the Foreign Affairs portfolio. Neither will it hang on what Ron Mark can squeeze out of Grant Robertson, Labour's tight-fisted Minister of Finance by way of cash to purchase new equipment for the Defence Force. And no matter what Tracey Martin does or does not do in her capacity as Children's Minister, it is highly unlikely that any reversal of the negative trends in New Zealand’s appalling record of child abuse will become apparent by the time the country again goes to the polls.
The party's fate will hang on Jones' success in proving New Zealand First is truly second to none when it comes to championing the interests of the regions.
That claim is in tatters following Labour's canning of the upgrading of State Highway One between Auckland and Whangarei. That was a kick in the guts for Northland. It is consequently a kick in the guts for New Zealand First. The resulting pain will linger or a long time to come.
Much thus hangs on the New Zealand First-instigated Provincial Growth Fund and its success in kick-starting enterprises which spark true and sustainable economic growth in the country's most economically-deprived areas.
The projects which received handouts in the first tranche of cash to be distributed under the aegis of the fund were underwhelming, however.
The late February launch of the fund included the allocation of $450,000 for a two-year pilot of an indigenous tōtara wood industry in Northland, up to $5 million to transform the 'heritage icon' which is Taranaki’s cathedral into a "nationally significant tourist drawcard", and $100,000 funding to help establish a Mānuka plantation over the next five years on 80 hectares of land near Wairoa.
It was all very worthy. But Silicon Valley it ain't.
The absence of truly innovative startups from the list must surely be of serious concern to Jones. Rather than confronting the chilling truth, he instead blamed the deadweight of bureaucracy for getting suitable projects off the ground only slowly.
Jones' denigration of public servants will be applauded by those who believe the state sector is pathologically averse to change of any kind.
That is the stuff of myth. During the three decades which have passed since the last major overhaul of state sector management practices, New Zealand's public service has adopted the ethos which guides the most ultra efficient corporations in the private sector.
To work in the public sector these days is to work in an environment where the only constant is constant change and never ending restructuring.
What Jones blithely ignores is that the erosion of political neutrality would threaten the most valuable attribute of the current relationship between a minister and his or her chief executive — the capacity of the latter to offer free and frank advice to the former without fear or favour.
There is rich irony in that. Jones' over-inflated confidence in his abilities makes him someone who not infrequently needs saving from himself.
He is one minister who is in much need of free and frank advice.
Staffing his Beehive with lackeys, cronies and yes-men and women would likely result in Jones making more appalling decisions on a par with the colossal clanger which saw $350,000 being drawn from the Provincial Growth Fund to investigate the feasibility of building a so-called "waste-to-energy" plant near Westport on the South Island’s West Coast.
Jones chose to ignore the compelling advice provided by the Ministry for the Environment that such a project be a white elephant to beat all white elephants such were the utterly hopeless economics of the proposal.
Even more devastating, however, was the ministry's warning that such an enterprise would spew out large quantities of greenhouse gases along with a range of harmful pollutants, such as toxic metals and dioxins.
Equally staggering was the claim made by Jones and his officials in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise that the application for the funding actually satisfied the criteria that a project contribute to "mitigating and adapting to climate change".
The obvious question is how this disaster waiting to happen squared with the self-congratulatory noises emanating from Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw following the ban on new permits for offshore exploration for oil and natural gas reserves.
It took a fresh embarrassment to spare what would have been the extreme blushes of the Prime Minister and the Climate Change Minister.
They were rescued by the revelation that the chief executive of the company behind the waste-to-energy plant was the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office on an unrelated matter.
The plug was immediately pulled on the application for funding of the feasibility study.
A subsequent internal inquiry conducted by the legal services division of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise discovered no background checks were conducted on applicants for grants from the Provincial Growth Fund.
The head of the ministry's new Provincial Development Unit which is charged with administrating the fund noted that at the time the unit was still in an "establishment phase".
Staff had been "working hard" to ensure their minister was able to present a "credible" package of projects in his late February announcement.
It does not take much reading between the lines of the report to realise that Jones was probably putting huge pressure on his officials to produce quick results.
If public servants are guilty of being too cautious, there is usually sound reason for that.
Does Jones really think his officials should cut even more corners — especially when the risks in doing so have been so vividly exposed and, moreover, in the very ministry whose running is ultimately his responsibility?
If he wants to be taken seriously, Jones must come up with a cogent and coherent explanation as to why enabling Cabinet ministers to choose chief executives is worth the sacrifice of political neutrality.
In that regard, here's some free and frank advice that no-one can afford to ignore: don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
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