Merger Charterchat Part 2

The more Radio New Zealand’s chief executive, Paul Thompson, talked up the wonders of the Government’s new public media entity, the faster I counted my spoons.

Like an old-fashioned encyclopedia salesman with his foot in the door, Thompson is trying to sell something that you never knew you needed. Public media — a new encylopedia to future proof you and your family’s education and knowledge for the fast-changing modern age.

I failed to complete a three-day training courseto sell encyclopedias as a holiday job while at university in Dunedin in the 1960s. Grolier’s Encyclopedias, I think they were called. Said quickly Grolier’s could easily be mistaken for Colliers, a better-known publisher at the time. Just as “public media” and “public broadcasting” sound much the same.

Two days of training was enough for me to know that I would never make it as a door-to-door enclycopedia salesman. I simply lacked the self-confidence required for cold-calling. Besides, the body language we were taught to use and the spiel we were told to memorise were more than a bit dodgy.

For instance, we were instructed to start wiping our shoes on the mat while knocking on the door so as to build up forward momentum to walk in the moment the door was opened. Then, after planting seeds of doubt in a mother’s mind — the men were always at work — about the need to prepare her children for a fast-changing world, we were to present a set of encylopedias as the only way forward.

Obviously, 20 handsome hardbound volumes were going to cost a fair bit. Fortunately, there was an easy-peasy payment plan, maybe just a shilling a day. Then, of course, there was the purpose-built bookcase.

Purchasers of an impressive set of encyclopaedias in their own bookcase beside the new telly in the living room at least had something to show for their money, unlike taxpayers wondering what they will be getting with the proposed new public media entity.

Specific references to its cost and funding have been redacted in the stack of Cabinet papers published by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage on Thursday 10 March.

“Funding for the new entity is subject to a Budget bid this year,” the ministry explains. Anything in the Budget is secret up until the day it is revealed in Parliament, this year at 2pm on Thursday 19 May. The practice of keeping a tight lid on the Budget’s contents dates from the days when it contained changes to excise taxes on alcohol, tobacco and petrol. Strict secrecy on the Budget’s contents is now broken only by Cabinet Ministers given permission to draw attention to themslves by issuing previews of spending initiatives in their portfolios.

The ministry adds, however, that “Change costs of $14.6 million this year to begin work on establishing the entity have already been approved.” This will be a year’s funding for the grandly-titled Strong Public Media Establishment Board — the third governance group set up by the ministry in four years.

An insight into where some of the money goes emerged this week, on Monday 14 March, when the ministry’s list of contractors was finally published on Parliament’s website by the Social Services and Community Select Committee. The list, which government agencies must provide to parliament’s committees as part of their annual reviews, was not included in the ministry’s original answers to the committee’s written questions. That meant the information was not available to MPs on the committee before the ministry’s chief executive, Bernadette Cavanagh, appeared before them on Wednesday 16 February for the ministry’s annual review hearing, a critical part of Parliament’s scrutiny of government agencies and departments.

The list reveals the distribution of government contracts awarded by the ministry under the government’s Covid-19 response programme in the 2020-21 financial year. Prominent among Wellington consultancies to win Covid-19 response contracts was Robert Walters, the local branch of an international recruitment consultancy, which received $3.85 million for delivering on 27 contracts, invoiced at an average rate of $1,230 a day. The firm also supplied the ministry with a principal media policy advisor charged out at $130 an hour at a total cost of $90,467 for six months’ work in the first half of 2021.

Another Wellington recruitment consultancy, Momentum, received just over $1 million from the ministry for Covid-19 response work. With an average daily charge-out rate of $1045, Momentum also supplied the ministry with a comunications manager for $1000 a day over six months for a total of $143,804.

H2R Consulting, with 48 staff in Wellington and Auckland, was paid $883,243 over seven Covid-19 response contracts with an average fee of $1230 a day.

MartinJenkins, founded by Kevin Jenkins and Doug Martin in 1993 and now with more than 60 staff in its Wellington, Auckland and Hamilton offices, invoicing at $218.50 an hour, received $107,992 for “policy support to implement the screen sector work programme” as part of the ministry’s Covid-19 response. For a non-Covid response “Media Support Retrospective Package Review”, MartinJenkins received $75,628.80 for three months’ work. Charging $3,160 a day over five weeks, MartinJenkins was paid $12,640 for “Support for implementing Srategic Framework and $117,828 for supplying a senior policy advisor at $166 an hour. A senior policy adviser for the ministry’s Stronger Public Media programmecame came at the higher rate of $280 an hour.

Carolyn Risk, a self-employed public sector consultant, barrister and a former deputy chief executive at both the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Internal Affairs, charging $1500 a day as a “Principal Policy Analyst, Media Support Work”, was paid a total of $271,500 as part of the Covid-19 response expenditure. Wellington business consultancy, Tregaskis Brown, founded by Karen Tregaskis and Tracy Brown in 2002, charging $2000 a day for delivering the services of a programme director, was paid $463,040. For $960 a day they also supplied a programme co-ordinator at a total cost of $153,532.

Among contracts outside the ministry’s Covid-19 response programme, one went to Allen + Clarke, with 28 consultants and 28 senior consultants in its Wellington office, who were paid $166,520 over 10 months for the development of a new strategic framework.

Te Amokura Consultants Ltd, owned by Fiona Apanui-Kupenga and Te Raumawhitu Kupenga of Porirua, was paid $175,844 for “Iwi/Maori Engagement and Communications Services” delivered over three months. Among 98 contracts, Te Amokura’s was one of the few sourced directly by the ministry. Almost all the other contracts were awarded by the AOG (All Of Government) panel run by the procurement and property section of the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

With the exception of MartinJenkins, the Wellington consultancy firms were established in the early 2000s. Helen Clark’s Labour Party had taken control of the Treasury benches, occupied for the previous nine years by National. Under her State Services Minister, Trevor Mallard, a new Leadership Development Centre was set up to turn senior civil servants into chief executives able to move seamlessly between the government and private sectors. The corporatisation of New Zealand’s public service was under way.

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