Control

Are elections really about serving the public, or are they contests for control? In this opinion piece, Andy Loader examines the growing influence of government and bureaucracy, the tension between socialism and individual freedom, and whether New Zealand's public service remains genuinely accountable to the people it is supposed to serve.

This is what elections are all about no matter what some political parties and candidates may say.

They all have various different reasons which they will quote for why they want to stand for election. Political parties are formed on the basis of a particular ideology and all candidates standing under that party banner will be required to follow that party’s ideology.

Different candidates will also state that they have particular reasons for why they wish to stand for election (e.g. erase child poverty, lower the costs of living, provide housing for the homeless, etc.) but they all come down to the same basic issue, “control”.

Elections are about control because whoever wins gets the authority to make decisions that affect everyone else.

But there's a deeper reason: elections are ultimately contests over who gets to decide how society is run, whose interests are prioritised, and how power is used.

Let's break that down.

Control over decisions

The people elected gain the power to:

• Make and change laws.
• Decide how taxpayers' money is spent.
• Set economic and social policies.
• Control government departments and public institutions.
• Decide national priorities. For example, whoever controls a government can influence taxation, housing, healthcare, education and immigration.

Control over resources

Government isn't just about ideas. It's about distributing resources.

There is never unlimited money, land, infrastructure or public funding. Political parties compete over who gets what, who pays, and who benefits.

Control over the future

Political decisions shape the direction of a country for years, sometimes generations.

Different political groups have different visions:

• More individual freedom or more government intervention.
• More public spending or lower taxation.
• Greater economic equality or greater emphasis on individual wealth creation.
• More centralised authority or more local decision-making. An election determines which vision gets the opportunity to become reality.

Control over other people's lives

This is perhaps the most important and uncomfortable part.

Even people, who don't vote, don't follow politics, or disagree with the winning party are still subject to the decisions made by those in power.

That is why political power matters so much.

Why political parties fight so hard to win

Because losing an election means losing the ability to directly influence the machinery of government.

Winning means gaining the authority to implement your agenda. It also means having influence over appointments, institutions, legislation and public spending.

But here's the bigger question.

Should elections really be about gaining control, or should they be about gaining responsibility?

There is a fundamental difference:

My view is that elections are necessary because power needs democratic legitimacy and accountability.

But democracy becomes unhealthy when winning becomes more important than governing well.

The real purpose of an election should not be to give one group control over everyone else. It should be to give people a peaceful, democratic way to choose who temporarily exercises public power on their behalf.

And that raises an even bigger question: Who actually controls the people who win elections?

This is one of the most important questions in a democracy, because voters elect politicians, but much of the day-to-day power of government is exercised by unelected public servants.

How can the voters control the bureaucrats in the public service?

The difficulty is that voters cannot directly hire, fire or instruct most bureaucrats. They exercise control indirectly through democratic institutions, legislation and accountability mechanisms.

There is also a distinction between controlling the public service and holding it accountable. A professional public service should be politically neutral, but it should never be beyond public scrutiny.

Let's look at how this works.

The chain of democratic accountability

THE VOTERS

Choose representatives and express public expectations

PARLIAMENT

Makes laws, approves spending and scrutinises government

MINISTERS

Set policy direction and are politically accountable

PUBLIC SERVICE

Implements laws, delivers services and provides advice

This is an accountability chain, not a direct command hierarchy. Public servants must also comply with the law and statutory independence requirements.

The problem is that the further you get from the ballot box, the less direct influence voters have.

How can voters exercise control?

There are several practical mechanisms.

Elections

Voters can elect representatives who promise to:

• Reform public services.
• Reduce unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Improve performance and productivity.
• Change legislation governing government agencies.
• Hold senior officials accountable. If politicians fail to deliver, voters can replace them.

Parliamentary scrutiny

Parliament can question ministers, investigate government departments and scrutinise public expenditure.

Select committees can examine departmental performance and call for explanations.

The Official Information Act

In New Zealand, the Official Information Act 1982 allows people to request government information.

This is particularly important because it enables citizens and journalists to investigate:

• How decisions were made.
• What advice officials provided.
• Whether policies are being implemented.
• How public money is being spent.
• Whether government agencies are meeting their obligations.

Independent watchdogs

New Zealand has institutions designed to hold public authorities accountable.

Public pressure

Citizens can organise petitions, contact MPs, make submissions on legislation, participate in consultations and bring public attention to failures.

Democracy does not end on Election Day.

But there is a fundamental problem

Here is where things get interesting.

Public servants are generally expected to be politically neutral and serve the government of the day, regardless of which political party wins.

That is important because you don't want government departments becoming political party machines.

However, political neutrality must not become an excuse for a lack of accountability.

Consider this situation:

• Voters elect a government promising to reduce government expenditure.
• Ministers instruct departments to identify savings.
• Departmental officials recommend limited changes.
• The government struggles to achieve its promised savings.
• The public has little visibility of why the policy was not delivered. Who is accountable?

The minister is accountable for the department's overall performance, but the chief executive has responsibilities for departmental management and delivery.

This is why transparency and meaningful performance measurement matter.

What could give voters more control?

I would consider six reforms:

Importantly, these mechanisms should not allow politicians to punish public servants for giving unwelcome but honest advice, or interfere with independent statutory decisions.

The fundamental democratic question

I think there is a question at the heart of what you're asking:

If voters cannot directly control the people administering government, and those administrators are not elected, how can we be certain that government actually reflects the will of the people?

This is the tension between democratic authority and bureaucratic administration.

There are three possible models worth distinguishing:

• Political control: Elected politicians determine the direction and priorities of government.
• Administrative independence: Public servants administer policy professionally, impartially and lawfully.
• Public accountability: Citizens can see what government does, challenge decisions and seek remedies when things go wrong. A healthy democracy needs all three.

My central argument: Public servants should be independent of political party interference, but not independent of accountability to the public.

The public service exists to serve the public, not itself.

I firmly believe that there should be a formal mechanism to assess the performance of government departments between elections, rather than citizens having to wait three years to express their dissatisfaction at the next election.

Over the past few decades we seem to have accepted that the government should have a much greater say in our life decisions and that to effectively implement that process the public service has needed to expand at a fairly large rate to manage that implementation.

To measure the actual level of expansion that has occurred depends on whether we mean the core Public Service (government departments and departmental agencies) or the entire public sector, including teachers, nurses, police, defence personnel and local government employees.

The distinction matters because government can shift work between departments, Crown entities and contractors without necessarily reducing the total amount of work taxpayer’s fund.

How much has the core Public Service grown?

The official Public Service Commission's historical data shows a dramatic rise and fall over the past half-century.

Public Service Commission

Sources: Te Ara and the Public Service Commission.

Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.

The key finding: the core Public Service grew by about 35% between 2017 and its December 2023 peak then contracted before rising again. The 1984 and 1995 figures also illustrate how sharply the core service was reduced during the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

Public Service Commission

What about the entire public sector?

The wider public sector is much larger. The Commission reports that it employed approximately 477,400 people in 2025, or 19.5% of New Zealand's workforce. That includes health, education, Crown entities and local government as well as the core Public Service.

Public Service Commission

What does this tell us about government control?

The staffing figures alone do not prove that bureaucracy has become less accountable or less efficient. Some employees deliver frontline services; others administer policy, regulation and management. Some functions have also moved outside the core Public Service over time.

To assess whether the state has genuinely expanded since 1970, we need to compare three things:

• Staffing relative to population, rather than raw headcount.
• Total public-sector employment and expenditure, including work outsourced to contractors and other agencies.
• Administrative overhead versus frontline delivery, to see where the growth has occurred. The official historical series shows that the core Public Service peaked at about 2.2% of the population in 1986–87, fell sharply in the following reforms, and has risen to around 1.2% in recent years.

The more revealing question may be whether government has become larger in its reach and expenditure, even during periods when the number of core public servants fell. That requires looking beyond departmental headcount.

The problem is I believe that government and the public service have forgotten the founding and current principles of government: equal citizenship and equal opportunity, individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, competitive enterprise and rewards for achievement and limited government.

How can we possibly have a government that is championing those values when we compare the latest policy manifestos from the current elections?

Currently the manifestos of all political parties are in my opinion far too interventionist and should revert to those founding principles which government is supposed to be about: equal citizenship and equal opportunity, individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, competitive enterprise and rewards for achievement and limited government.

We need to see government and the associated public service return to the basic functions of government and leave the social engineering to the taxpayers to decide what they want and what they can afford to fund.

From where I sit the prospect of asset taxes whether through capital gain, wealth or land is a horrendous prospect as is the prospect of privatisation of public assets such as our water infrastructure etc.

We have various parties in the upcoming election promising to redistribute the wealth in our country but the problem that I see is that none of them have any real experience with developing wealth or the effort involved in doing so. They all seem to think that if you wish it to be so that’s what will happen but they are in for a huge shock if they ever get the chance to control the wealth of the nation.

They need to learn the old mantra that a country can never tax its way to prosperity. There is a distinction between redistributing wealth and creating wealth. The two things are definitely not the same economic activity.

This election has almost become nothing more than a socialist lolly scramble with all parties trying to convince the voters that they will be able to provide benefits for all without mentioning that all of those lollies they are promising have to be paid for and the ones doing the paying will be the taxpayers of New Zealand.

The theory behind socialism is that society should organise its economy and resources in a way that benefits the population as a whole, rather than allowing wealth and economic power to be concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of private owners.

At its heart, socialism is concerned with one central question:

Who should own, control and benefit from the wealth a society produces?

It is both an economic theory and a political philosophy. There are several different versions, but they share some underlying principles.

There are five main central ideas behind socialism

Collective ownership

Socialists argue that important productive assets should be owned collectively, publicly or by workers, rather than exclusively by private individuals.

These assets might include:

• Energy infrastructure.
• Railways and transport.
• Major industries.
• Natural resources.
• Essential services. The idea is that the benefits of production should be shared more broadly.

Economic equality

Socialism argues that excessive inequality creates an imbalance of power.

For example, someone who owns a large corporation may have considerable influence over employment, wages, investment and even political decisions.

Socialists believe economic arrangements should reduce these inequalities.

Distribution according to need

A traditional socialist principle is that people should have access to essential goods and services according to their needs.

Examples include:

• Healthcare.
• Education.
• Housing.
• Social protection.
• Basic economic security.

Economic planning

Some socialist systems believe important economic decisions should be made collectively or through government planning rather than being left entirely to market forces.

This can involve governments deciding:

• What industries should be developed?
• Where investment should go.
• What infrastructure is needed?
• How resources should be distributed.

Solidarity and cooperation

Socialism places considerable emphasis on cooperation rather than competition as the organising principle of society.

The underlying argument is that people are interdependent and should share responsibility for society's wellbeing.

There are in fact different forms of socialism

An important point is that socialism is not one single economic system.

These distinctions are important. A country with high taxes, public healthcare and generous welfare benefits is not necessarily socialist in the ownership-of-production sense.

There are many arguments against socialism

Critics raise several important objections.

Concentration of power: If government owns and controls large parts of the economy, political power and economic power can become concentrated in the same institution.

Bureaucracy: Central planning requires administrators to make decisions about resources, production, investment and distribution. This can create large administrative structures.

Incentives: Critics argue that excessive redistribution or restrictions on private ownership can weaken incentives to invest, innovate and work.

Efficiency: Central planners may lack the information that millions of independent buyers and sellers communicate through market prices.

Political freedom: Where governments control employment, industry and resources, opposition groups can become economically dependent on the state.

These are not merely theoretical concerns. Some historical socialist governments have developed highly centralised and authoritarian political systems, although other socialist movements have operated within democratic systems.

The fundamental contradiction: equality versus control

This is where I think the theory becomes particularly interesting given that Socialism seeks to reduce the concentration of economic power in private hands.

But achieving this through government ownership and administration can create another concentration of power: the state.

The critical question becomes: If the state controls the resources, who controls the state?

And if elected politicians cannot effectively control their bureaucracies, how can ordinary voters ensure that public ownership genuinely means public control?

This is one of the major challenges facing socialist theory.

The bigger philosophical question

There are really three competing ideas about how society should organise itself:

• Capitalism: Individual ownership and market competition should drive economic activity.
• Socialism: Collective ownership and social benefit should play the central role in economic activity.
• Mixed economy: Private enterprise, competitive markets, public services and government regulation should operate alongside one another. Most modern democracies use some form of mixed economy.

New Zealand is an interesting case study because it adopted many ideas associated with socialism without becoming a socialist state.

Those socialist ideas helped shape New Zealand's commitment to social protection, public healthcare, workers' rights and economic security. But they also contributed to ongoing debates about government spending, bureaucratic power, economic incentives and individual responsibility.

The benefit

Workers gained greater protection against certain forms of exploitation and insecurity. The state increasingly accepted responsibility for addressing social problems that private markets alone might not resolve.

The weakness

Government intervention creates its own challenges. Wage-setting rules can protect workers, but poorly designed rules may also restrict flexibility, increase costs or make it harder for inexperienced workers to enter employment.

More fundamentally, once government becomes responsible for addressing a growing range of social needs, the public must decide how much responsibility belongs to the state, employers, families and individuals.

That question remains unresolved today.

The central problem is not public ownership itself. It is whether public organisations face clear objectives, effective oversight and meaningful consequences when they perform poorly.

The biggest weakness: who controls the public service?

This brings us back to my original question about elections, bureaucrats and the concentration of power.

Socialist ideas encourage governments to take responsibility for collective needs. But every additional government responsibility creates decisions that someone must make, administer and enforce.

Consider the chain:

Voters

Express preferences through elections

Politicians

Make laws, set priorities and allocate funding

Public servants

Interpret rules, advise ministers and administer programmes

Citizens

Experience the decisions in their daily lives

The difficulty is that elected politicians may set broad objectives without determining every detail of how those objectives are implemented.

Officials inevitably exercise judgement over operational decisions, policy advice, eligibility rules and resource allocation. That discretion is often necessary, but it can make it harder for voters to identify who is responsible when things go wrong.

New Zealand does have safeguards. The Auditor-General independently audits public organisations, while the Ombudsman investigates complaints about administrative decisions and official information. Both institutions report through arrangements designed to support accountability to Parliament.

However, formal oversight does not automatically guarantee effective accountability.

A report can identify a failure without ensuring that the underlying problem is fixed. A minister can accept responsibility without the public seeing a meaningful improvement. An agency can meet its formal targets while failing to deliver what citizens actually need.

What should change?

I suggest five principles for a more accountable public service.

• Clear responsibility: Every major programme should have identifiable decision-makers and a clear explanation of who is accountable for its results.
• Measurable outcomes: Performance should be assessed through real-world improvements, not merely expenditure, activity or compliance with procedures.
• Transparent decisions: Citizens should be able to understand why important decisions were made, subject to legitimate privacy and security restrictions.
• Consequences for persistent failure: Repeated poor performance should lead to corrective action and, where appropriate, leadership changes.
• Protection from political abuse: Public servants should be accountable for their conduct and performance, but protected when they provide honest advice or administer the law impartially. A well-run public service can create enormous social value; a poorly designed one can consume resources without achieving its intended goals.

New Zealand's history suggests three important lessons.

First, socialist ideas have had a lasting and often beneficial influence. They helped establish the principle that economic hardship, illness and old age are not exclusively private problems. A prosperous society can reasonably choose to share some of the risks and costs of life.

Second, state intervention has limits. Public ownership and redistribution do not automatically produce equality, efficiency or good outcomes. They require competent administration, sustainable funding, sound incentives and independent scrutiny.

Third, reducing inequality and limiting government power are not mutually exclusive. A country can provide strong public services while maintaining competitive markets, private property, individual freedom and effective checks on political authority.

My preferred test for any policy is straightforward: does it improve people's lives, does it use public resources effectively, and can citizens hold those responsible to account?

The outcomes matter.

In my opinion what we need at this point in time is to have a focus on the founding principles of government (equal citizenship and equal opportunity, individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, competitive enterprise and rewards for achievement and limited government) instead of the current focus which is mainly about control of citizens’ rights and actions.

Maybe we need a fun party that promotes personal freedoms and responsibilities alongside limitations on government control.