Mates-based management an Achilles’ heel for NZ

Opinion: Last week, Newsroom reported on the recent restructure at the Department of Conservation, which resulted in the removal of a deputy-director general role. 

I have had both the burden and privilege of working with DoC for over 20 years for a range of organisations and clients. In my experience, the department is capable of reflecting the best values of Kiwis: the mixture of passion, wisdom and hands-on practical effort that once built the country. However, at its worst, it can also embody the ‘we know best’ bureaucratic bloody-mindedness Kiwis are also well capable of. Over the past decade, I have sadly seen some parts of DoC shift from the former mindset to the latter, and seemingly, with little desire to improve. 

Rightly or wrongly, I see DoC’s engine room not as the rangers on the front line (which should drive its culture), but the staff within the planning and permissions team. In those 10 years this team’s performance in my opinion was almost universally poor. The difficulty in making such bold statements is that when central government makes a decision, especially in a charged environment such as conservation, there are winners and losers. People are not always going to agree. 

However, if the culture of a team has become about disrespect for the law, policy, and an insistence that it just knows best, then it’s a different story. DoC’s planning and permissions team, and its bosses, have been no stranger to controversy and judicial comment. A few examples:

• In 2014, the Ombudsman described DoC’s decision-making as “nonsense on stilts”, in relation to the department approving a doubling of guided walkers on the Routeburn Track, contravening the Mt Aspiring National Park Management Plan, which limited the number of these walkers. DoC had claimed “exceptional circumstances”, a concept that does not exist in law or policy. In this case, the department never cancelled the doubling of the guided walk numbers. 
• In 2017, the Ombudsman described DoC’s decision-making as “unreasonable, and [potentially] contrary to law”, in response to it approving up to 70 helicopter landings a day in a remote part of Fiordland National Park, where the plan limits it to 10. DoC cancelled the extra landings, again claiming ‘exceptional circumstances’. 
• In 2021, it attempted to get around a rule in a higher order policy – the West Coast Conservation Management Strategy – by unlawfully changing the rules in the lower order document, the Paparoa National Park Management Plan, to enable helicopter flights into a part of Paparoa National Park intended to remain quiet and free from aircraft noise. Despite strenuous advice to the contrary from the community, DoC, and its own supposedly independent oversight agency, the New Zealand Conservation Authority, signed off on the proposals (on DoC’s advice). However, the High Court found differently, describing a “significant derogation”, and changed the park plan rules back to what they should have been, awarding costs against the department and the Conservation Authority. DoC again claimed exceptional circumstances. 

DoC’s planning and permissions team showed over a 10-year period, at least in public, that they cared little for the rule of law and policy on public land – if it got in the way of tourism or development. Repeated judicial comments and interventions, as well as media investigations, did not change the culture of decision-making within this team. The sad thing is, with some humility and a reading of their own legislation, there were pathways through most of this. Pathways that would have brought people along with them.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, or, ‘Who will guard the guards’, is the question that democracies, and those who value the rule of law, face. If the guards of our public lands have a culture of expediency and rule-bending, and their culture is seemingly impervious to repeated judicial intervention, then what can seriously be done?

DoC remains an organisation with no independent oversight, other than the courts, and largely voluntary organisations who choose to keep an eye on them.

(Apart from the approval of national park management plans, conservation boards are advisory only, with no independent functions or, critically, a budget of their own. It’s the same for the New Zealand Conservation Authority – no independent powers, apart from the final approval of national park management plans and general policies for national parks, no independent budget, no powers of investigation. There’s an illusion of oversight and accountability, but nothing in law or even practically functional by way of a budget.)

It’s this lack of oversight that enables regulatory cultures to become toxic. I don’t doubt that there were, and are, still principled individuals within the department, who internally resisted some of the behaviour and spoke against it, but for whatever reason, managers did not listen or act. 

If even the traditionally warring public and stakeholders could agree – not perhaps on the decisions, but that parts of DoC were so broken they couldn’t even run a lawful process – the sounding of that warning siren should have triggered a response either in senior management or from a minister (these issues occurred under both National-led and Labour-led governments). But it didn’t. The same managers in planning and permissions continued on, and some were even promoted. 

I have tried to reflect on why it happened, and how a culture in a regulatory agency deteriorated to the point it could not learn from mistakes, and instead doubled down.

People get into conservation to make a difference, for passion and vocational reasons, because conservation almost certainly isn’t about the money. The motivations are many and varied, but usually centre around a love for the outdoors, for species, for people, and to nurture, care, and protect New Zealand’s special places. With shared values, and even lacking that, shared trench-like experiences of being the thin green line in environmental disputes can result in conservation department staff forming tighter bonds than in other organisations. 

This closeness can make top management blind to poor performance with their mates. This is noble cause corruption, the deaf tin-ear, where the department became so insistent, and too close to the work, that no change was possible. The more criticism you receive, the more you have it right.

Flaws of colleagues and the warning sirens of oversight agencies (and the media) were ignored, swept under the rug, hoping for the best next time. Mates-based management may indeed be the Achilles heel of a small country like New Zealand. 

It is early days, but there are positive signs of a return to professionalism. The relatively new director-general, Penny Nelson, has cleaned out her top brass and replaced them with experienced managers from other public service agencies – caring about conservation, yes, but with enough distance to see the flaws without emotion. Nelson’s decision to replace former deputy director-general Marie Long was the right one, but the planning and permissions division will need ongoing oversight and firm direction to reset its culture. 

Furthermore, the risk of mates-based management doesn’t just apply to old rangers, it’s equally a problem in the close-knit Wellington public service culture. The challenge now for DoC is ensuring the pendulum doesn’t swing back to the other extreme. I’m confident it won’t, but the number of issues emerging from the bulging rug under which they were swept may serve as a reminder.