"Public servants aren't readily able to give voice to it, but they are also concerned. I think there's a deep sense of unease, at chief executive level, at second tier level, right down to junior civil servants who have only ever worked under the new system. We have to earn back the public's trust, frankly, all of us.

"It is critical that leaders in the public sector demonstrate they have a real grip on the basics. That means going back to the basic values and ethics of public service..."
— Colin Keating, Secretary for Justice

"The excesses of Winz are a mere symptom of a far more serious malaise in the New Zealand public service. It is losing its way. Public service values are being exchanged for private sector values which are misplaced in the public service. We have a long list of examples to prove it: the police computer, the Fire Service, the Tourism Board, the Qualifications Authority, the health system, ACC, the National Library computer and now Winz.

"The erosion of public service values has gone too far and urgent action is needed. We need for greater ministerial responsibility; the recruitment, motivation and retention of talented senior staff who understand the concept of public service; a focus on medium and long-term planning; adequate resourcing and incentives to ensure investment in delivery of a service; and a broadening the concept of accountability to ensure public servants see themselves as responsible for the public good rather than just for narrowly defined outputs.

"The steady deterioration of the public service can be halted only if we are willing to address these issues..."
— Steve Maharey, Labour spokesman on social welfare and employment.

"There is no question that the public service today is very different to what it was 15 years ago. As a parliamentarian I can say that, by and large, the changes have been very much for the better.

"The public service is now infinitely more responsive to the Government of the day. There is no self-serving clique of mandarins who watch politicians come and go through an electoral revolving door while they get on with what they think needs to be done. The elected Government, through the mechanism of the purchase agreements it draws up with Government departments, is in a far better position to see its policies carried through.

"While the public service is now more responsive to the wishes of elected representatives, it is still its duty to offer "free, frank and fearless" advice. It is, therefore, worrying that Labour politicians continue to threaten that they'll do away with senior "bureaucrats" whom they consider to be right wing.

"You can't have an independent public service if, as Mr Maharey and Helen Clark often seem to imply, you have to be "ideologically safe" to retain your place in the event of a change in Government.

"The other fundamental shift over the last 15 years has been to leave the management of public services more explicitly to chief executives. Politicians decide the policy, chief executives are left to run the departments. Gone are the days when overstretched, unfocused (and often untrained) politicians made managerial decisions from the Beehive. Does Mr Maharey hanker for those days? It would be unwise to assume that politicians know better than trained managers how to run large Government organisations..."
— Simon Upton, Minister of State Services.

"Divorcing public servants from the whims of politicians something attempted around the world with varying degrees of success is fine in its principle, but there still more than a few questions remaining unanswered. State Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham appointed Mrs Rankin at arms length from the political process. So far, so good. He now publicly vilifies her for a lack of good financial reporting and accountability.

"We are entitled to ask what checks and balances apply to Mr Wintringham too. It is one thing to insist on a separation of the public service and the influence of politicians; it is quite another for public servants to think they are answerable to no one.

"Stripped of all the political rhetoric the issue is simply one of accountability. Ministers, in this country at least, seldom if ever take ultimate responsibility. And now it has become obvious that the heads of organisations entrusted with monitoring closely our precious tax dollars bodies that face no competition at all are immune from the consequences of any lack of accountability on their parts..."
— editorial in The Daily News, 6 August 1999

"What the public sector needs now is a creativity bypass. It has so massively over-corrected from its Sir Humphrey days that it has virtually come full circle in achieving dumb inefficiency. We need a public sector that is a little bit stodgier, a little less fashion-conscious. Taxpayers are not clients, civil servants are not our chums, as the Winz TV commercial might lead the gullible viewer to believe. However we dress it up with logos, uniforms and affirmations of excellence, we have absolutely no choice in how we interface with each other.

"Agencies such as Winz are not businesses. They are utilities. They can be efficient without phantom commercial disciplines. What they need, clearly, are more boundaries. More bureaucracy, even. Just as the government has become belatedly prescriptive about the hiring and firing of state board appointees, it needs to get more bossy about basic things such as work hours. Horrendous anecdotal evidence has surfaced since the Winz junket scandal about the lack of actual work done. People are so busy being trained as case managers they have run out of time to manage cases. Eventually, they run out of inclination, as well. They might be fabulous, sparky, empowered human beings, but people needing benefits have a dickens of a job getting hold of them.

"It's time to re-embrace the tired old image of the public service. It is boring. It is workaday. It is required, not desired. It has tedious rules and guidelines and forms, but not all of them are just to spoil people's fun. Bureaucracy at its best is self-limiting, task-oriented and matter-of-fact.

Bosses such as Rankin have been cruelly deluded into believing it could be something more like the Moonies or some sort of New Age self-actualisation camp. It was a nice try. But there's a whole generation of management and academic disciples of public sector whizziness out there who urgently need to be sent on a course somewhere to have it all knocked out of them..."
— Jane Clifton, Wellington political columnist, writing in The Listener

"Jane Clifton's "back to basics public service" seems to be a prescription for more bureaucracy, more rules and less creativity. She seems to see the past in a rose-tinted rear-view mirror. Many taxpayers would regard the cure as worse than the disease.

"The public sector has undergone massive change over the past 20 years or so. Much of that change was a necessary part of the wider economic reforms undertaken by successive governments.

"The reason for much of the change was simple: remove the government from activities to which it was poorly suited and focus its attention on those things that it alone can do, or does best. The goal was never solely one of efficiency doing more (or the same) for less; but rather effectiveness doing what needed to be done as well as possible.

"It is easier to measure efficiency than effectiveness. So it is not surprising that questions about efficiency still dominate public discussion about the public service. Stories about extravagance and waste are more exciting to read and easier to write than ones about improved services, better-skilled staff, better-researched advice and changes for the better in the lives of New Zealanders.

"Clifton is absolutely right: government departments have to operate within bounds. We do have to watch our spending, behave appropriately and conduct the government's business with professionalism and decorum.

"What she does not seem to appreciate is that the government and the public expect standards of service to be lifted ever higher. At the same time, the core funding that government departments receive remains largely the same.

"The recipe for effectiveness increasingly requires a combination of process innovation, staff training and motivation, skilled communications, inspiring leadership and lean management.

"It is easy to take examples of any one of these attributes of the contemporary public service out of context and mock them. It would be instructive to consider how far the public service has come in the past 20 years ..."
— Roger Blakeley, Secretary for Internal Affairs