Emma Hatton and Jonathan Milne
Wellington, July 15, 2024
Civil Service mandarins Iona Holsted, Caralee McLiesh and Lil Anderson are not expected to have their contracts renewed, sources say.
All three had been appointed on fixed-term contracts that come up for renewal in the coming months; none is expected to get another term.
There had been plans for the Acting Public Service Commissioner to announce the departures as early as this (July 4) morning. But after a clash between the government and KiwiRail Chair David McLean over the announcement of his retirement from the Board, the management of any statement is up in the air.
Iona Holsted
There may instead be separate announcements over the coming days.
It is believed that Holsted, who has headed the Ministry of Education for nearly eight years, will want her exit announced on her own terms; it is unusual for Chief Executives to serve more than eight years.
The same expectation of controlling their own announcements is likely to be true of the departures of the other two Chief Executives, though they have each served less than five years and might have expected their contracts to be renewed.
Te Arawhiti (Maori Crown Relations) is expected to announce a wider restructuring, which would likely delay Anderson’s resignation.
Holsted was first appointed in 2016 and then reappointed in 2021 for a term ending early December 2024. Immediately before her 2016 appointment, she was Chief Executive and Chief Review Officer of the Education Review Office, and previously spent time in the Ministry for Social Development. Earlier this year Holsted oversaw the disestablishment of 755 roles in the Ministry of Education.
The Public Service Association has since filed proceedings in the Employment Relations Authority saying the Ministry was not complying with the collective agreement requirement that it must do everything it can to find other roles for staff it was laying off.
Caralee McLiesh
Treasury Secretary Caralee McLiesh worked at the New South Wales Treasury from 2008 to 2018. She took up a five-year contract in September 2019.
The last two Treasury Secretaries John Whitehead and Gabriel Makhlouf were reappointed for second terms. Prior to this, McLiesh worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, the International Red Cross and the Boston Consulting Group.
Te Arawhiti Chief Executive Lil Anderson has previously held senior leadership roles in Māori Crown relations across the public service, including with the Ministry of Justice, Te Puni Kōkiri and the Office of Treaty Settlements.
Payment delays at Te Arawhiti
Earlier this year it was revealed that Te Arawhiti was behind on its bills, with lawyers complaining to the Auditor-General that they have been waiting up to six months for payments from Te Arawhiti.
Treaty claimants rely on funding from Te Arawhiti to prepare their claims. But five weeks ago, Anderson told 1 News that due to the Agency’s funding challenges, it could no longer commit to paying for hearings already scheduled in the High Court next year.
She admitted that the Agency had known since last year that next year’s $12 million budget could fall short. “Late last year, the pattern of costs started to change quite substantively,” she said. “We went from around 30 funding inquiries a month to over 30 a week. We have gone from one to two hearings a year to around eight.”
Other public sector bosses departing unexpectedly this year include Secretary of Defence Andrew Bridgman and Kāinga Ora Chief Executive Andrew McKenzie.
Bridgman’s five-year term ended on June 30 and was expected to be renewed for another three years. Instead, Brook Barrington has taken his place as the Secretary of Defence and Chief Executive of the Ministry of Defence.
Chief of Defence Air Marshal Kevin Short also retired this year, but that was expected.
It does mean a complete swap-out at the top with a new Minister of Defence, Secretary of Defence and Chief of Defence.
Kāinga Ora’s Andrew McKenzie resigned this week, amid a war of words with the government over how the housing agency had performed on his watch. Kāinga Ora’s Chair said McKenzie had done an “excellent job” and made “an enormous difference,” for example by delivering 4000 new houses this year.
But Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said that the agency had been “chronically underperforming.”
On Wednesday (July 3, Housing Minister Chris Bishop followed up with a “refresh” of Kāinga Ora’s Board, as recommended by a Bill English-led review into the housing agency.
The new Board at Kainga Ora
A new Chair of the Board, Simon Moutter, was appointed in May replacing the ex-Labour MP and unionist Vui Mark Gosche, who stood aside in February.
The new members of the Board are Arihia Bennett, Jenn Bestwick, Alan Dent, Peter Jeffries, Fiona Mules and Ceinwen McNeil (who helped review the entity alongside English).
Kiwirail board chair David MacLean also retired early, confirming his departure from the state-owned enterprise would be at the end of July, rather than October as planned. This was followed by the resignation of two Board Directors: Rachel Pinn and Ed Sims.
In a public statement, he indicated the government had attempted to gazump him: “I understand the government intends to announce my retirement today, so I have brought my announcement forward.”
Other changes this year were always foreshadowed before the election, like that of Air Marshal Kevin Short and Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes, who retired in February after eight years in the role and a long career leading the country’s biggest government departments.
What that does mean is that the Public Service Commission is left with an Acting Head, Heather Baggott, to manage the biggest clean-out of the public sector in recent memory.
Jonathan Milne is the Managing Editor of Newsroom Pro, while Emma Hatton covers Politics for Newsroom based in Wellington. The above story, which appeared on the Website of Newsroom (July 4) has been published here under a Special Agreement.
