Repaired RSS feed highlights minister’s failing portfolios

Last week, I pointed out that this government, specifically Internal Affairs under Act Minister Brooke van Velden, had managed to lose RSS communications from the Beehive to the world. See “Let me nitpick on the government RSS feeds“. It’d been offline for about three weeks at that point. That was just sloppy and incompetent for the DIA who amongst other things are responsible for overseeing government technology services.

Sometime in the last couple of days, the DIA finally managed to succeed in unbreak this service. Good thing, as I was about to shutdown the Govt tab on our feed for a lack of substantive progress. I didn’t like highlighting that this government was totally bereft of timely propaganda information on their priorities.

But this kind of stupid outage is probably an inevitable consequence of having widespread shedding of skills, especially technical ones. However it is, in my view, accentuated in crucial portfolios by having inexperienced MPs bumped into full ministerial roles. There is a reason that future ministers wind up working as associate ministers first.

Since Brooke van Velden became minister, the Department of Internal Affairs has managed to shed at least 700 employees from her ministry, and an unknown number of technical contractors. The consequences of this will have been hard on their systems, including their information symptoms systems. Internal Affairs is directly responsible for government technology.

The Department of Internal Affairs is a core government organisation. They are responsible for a wide range of activities both in keeping the government operating for instance they are responsible for the government technology services, keeping track of births, death, marriages, residency and citizenship. Most people in NZ only see them in their guise of managing passports. But they also handle a large portfolio of crucial issues inside the country like gambling, censorship, local government, storing our history, supporting commissions of inquiry, libraries, ports, airports, and many others.

Being a Minister of Internal Affairs is not a post that should have been given to a MP with a single term in parliament. It is simply too important and that is steadily showing up in deficiencies like dropping access to something as important as information about the activities of the grovernment..

So far, in my view, Brooke van Welden is barely showing sufficient ability and responsibility to be a Associate Minister. Her role as Minister in a crucial portfolio like Internal Affairs is clearly beyond her abilities. Sloppy mistakes in this portfolio have strong tendency to reverberate down through decades and generations.

• New Zealand Passport system upgrades lead to longer processing times
• Government cuts unbelievably target child exploitation, violent extremism, ports and airports
• Internal Affairs terminates birth, death and marriage registrations IT project
• Internal Affairs job cuts will lead to more Kiwis being scammed online, union says
• Government spending cuts force DIA to contract out critical legal work

The lack of current competence also applies to van Welen’s other ministerial post – that of Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. For instance the attitude of the Minister towards effective unions is displayed in “The Beehive doors are shut to the CTU“.

It can not be much of a surprise that a relatively inexperienced ACT MP, handed the workplace relations portfolio, does not want to entertain the country’s biggest union in her office.

But it still astonishes the head of that union, CTU president Richard Wagstaff.

After all, he has met regularly with ministers of all political persuasions to enable them to get a deeper understanding of what was going on with the country’s workers.

After just one initial meeting, in November 2023, not only has he become persona non grata at the Beehive, but the “unions” Brooke van Velden has seen are fringe organisations, with few members.

This is where political inexperience shows. Pandering to fringe groups may be good for retaining Act votes in the next election – especially in her electorate. But that is not the role of a Minister of the Crown. Their role is to sustain the functions of the Crown. Not to let them deteriorate through personal failings and preferences.

To counter the inevitable trolls, I don’t work for the NZ government except tangentially. Almost all of my work is targeted towards exports rather than internals. Occasionally I find my work popping up inside NZ – usually to my surprise.