My Friday blog this week shares a colleague’s view. Mark Stockdale, who joined our Policy and Advocacy team, is hugely experienced in policy which is why we have him on board. He brings fresh policy thinking, as do Billy and Rowan.
With him well settled in he has provided this unfettered opinion and insight on NZTA. – Dom
I’ve had foreboding feeling for a while that the NZTA has lost its way. When I’ve been dealing with people at NZTA I get a sense that they are not exactly sure what they’re trying to achieve and that their managers don’t even understand what they do, and that it’s difficult to get their approval to revise Rules and regulations. There seems to be a general sense of malaise and lack of momentum.
It seems I’m not alone in those views, with even NZTA staff feeling much the same way. A recently published review of the driver licensing and vehicle testing functions of NZTA reported that “Issues identified by the staff I spoke to included management turnover, a lack of proper oversight, attention and support from higher levels… and a sense of a lack of understanding between management and the frontline.”
NZTA have been through a series of restructures over the past few years, and yet it hasn’t improved their performance. It’s probably been more damaging to staff morale than anything, with staff moved onto areas they were not familiar with – a frustration noted in the independent review. I personally have a sense that the NZTA is broken in its current form and needs more than just an internal restructure.
But one restructure I wasn’t expecting and had heard no rumours about was the formation of another mega-Ministry like MBIE, this one combining the ministries of Transport, Environment, Housing and Urban Development, and the local government parts of the Department of Internal Affairs. To be named the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT), the new mega Ministry is aimed to be operational by July 2026.
We asked ChatGPT to design a new logo for the mega-Ministry
– and have probably saved taxpayers $50,000 in logo consultancy fees!
An interesting rumour in Wellington is that the original name was going to be the more logical Ministry for Environment, Transport and Housing. I’ll let you work out why that name didn’t fly…
In what could be a classic bureaucratic blunder though, the Ministry of Transport is already scheduled to move into new premises in March. One hopes the new merger doesn’t foist another move on them, in some vain attempt to bring all staff together under one roof – to be fair, not all MBIE staff are housed in the same building as there isn’t one big enough to hold them all!
But if we’re talking mergers, I would have thought it made more sense to merge the MoT with NZTA. Yes, the latter is an agency and not a Ministry, essentially responsible for the operation of government transport policy, and delivery of land transport infrastructure.
There is a view that ‘operational’ policy should be separated from the development of said policy (think hospitals (Te Whatu Ora) vs. Ministry of Health), but I’ve always thought if that were true, then why is there no Ministry of Police? Think about it, the police are one of the largest government agencies, but it is also responsible for developing its own operational policy. A little too cosy if you ask me, but it’s always been that way.
What is so special about having MoT and NZTA separate?
As someone who has liaised closely with both entities for some 30 years of my career, I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t really understand why they are separate, and moreover, there have been numerous occasions when I’m not sure who is responsible for what – and which organisation I need to talk to. A perfect example is reviewing Land Transport Rules. As operational policy, these are administered by NZTA, and yet it is often MoT that drafts them. So who exactly is in charge? And sometimes there is conflict or tension between the two organisations. This can result in delays in developing policy or changing Rules and regulation, as one or the other may not see it as a priority. All of this confusion would disappear if the two entities were one.
And here’s another thing. While the MoT is answerable to the Minister for Transport, the NZTA isn’t. So if the Minister wants to direct certain policy – a recent example I can think of was the move to annual WoFs for classic vehicles, which is an NZTA Rule – then he has to direct the MoT to make it happen.
That was a funny little policy change because the Federation of Motoring Cubs (which represents classic car and motorcycle clubs), had been advocating for annual WoFs and had written to NZTA’s Director of Land Transport seeking a Rule change. The Director denied the request due to safety concerns, which was questionable given the wealth of WoF data and crash statistics in the public domain showing classic vehicles are a low-risk group. Nek minnit, the Minister of Transport Chris Bishop is at a classic car show announcing that NZTA will be consulting on just such a Rule change! The phrase “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” comes to mind…
Put another way, the Minister might be able to exercise more control over operational policy direction if NZTA were a part of MoT. Food for thought.
Mark’s insight has been somewhat comforting to me. The thoughts are from someone different in our team but the sentiments and feelings are still the same.
