One of the challenges for incoming Ministers, particularly those without previous experience of government or of  the Wellington bureaucracy will be to master the language of bureaucrats. This is absolutely necessary in order to understand what one is being told.

Here are some examples – all taken from a conference I attended recently where officials presented. 

“This is a key priority for our department.” (Sometime presented as ‘this is an area we are focusing on very closely’). 

Yes, but what is actually being done? How many key priorities has the department got – presumably more than just one, so where does this one sit in the pantheon of key priorities? 

If there are 48 key priorities then the statement is smoothing doublespeak because nothing is happening. If it is one of eight, but it is not getting much attention or enough resources, then the statement is correct but misleading.

Try this one: “we are working more closely with (agency x) around issue y”. What? The statement suggests activity, but there is no reference to achievement, results or coherent action. But there is activity. The department’s staff are keeping busy with the very productive and necessary task of interdepartmental liaison, leading to a “whole of government” approach, or as it used to be known, “joined up government.” 

One of the best from the conference was: “we are looking at ways to ensure that we engage in projects that are sustainable in the long term and aren’t just a short term fix.”

Well that’s good isn’t it? We wouldn’t want our money wasted on quick fixes, or on projects that weren’t sustainable. But pray tell me, what actually is happening to fix the problem that the department is supposedly addressing?

Well they haven’t got to that bit yet. They’re still at the ‘looking at ways to ensure…” stage. For the bureaucrats, with luck this government will have come and gone before anything real actually has to be done, and the process can start all over again with the next one.

This the sort of stuff that frustrates the hell out of Ministers, particularly those who have a go getting, make things happen commercial background (which is not everywhere in the private sector of course). But these people aren’t much into “leadership across all sectors and agencies to get better alignment” whatever that might mean. 

Which is why Ministers with commercial experience despair of bureaucrats. Which is why an outgoing Minister will offer to brief an incoming Minister even of the opposite political persuasion. Politicians band together against bureaucrats. The ones who have been in government know how hard it is to get anything done, to get real change. 

The conversation between the politicians is about which senior official is useful and constructive and can be relied upon, and which is a pathetic drone plodding towards retirement. It’s about which sections in a Ministry can be relied upon to deliver the services that are their responsibility, and which are risky and unreliable and which need to be constantly watched because the staff are disaffected and leak furiously.  Welcome to Wellington Ministers.