Australasian Political Studies Association Conference 2003
Hosted by the School of Government
University of Tasmania

Public Policy Stream

"Politics, Public Policy and Perverseness - Institutional Reform in Aotearoa / New Zealand"

David Clendon
Lecturer in Resource Management and Environmental Planning
UNITEC Institute of Technology
Auckland, NZ

Abstract:

The institutions associated with both resource management and the provision of ‘public good’ science in New Zealand were reformed as part of the major reform programme of the Labour government between 1984 and 1991.

The reform of environmental and resource law was in harmony with the ideological tune of the overall programme, intended to reduce and internalise transaction costs as well as government intervention and regulation. The resource management law reform (RMLR) was also championed by environmental and conservation lobbies both within and outside government, albeit for very different reasons.

Public science prior to 1992 was characterised by the almost monolithic Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; the Ministries of Agriculture, Fisheries, Works and Development, Forestry; and the Meteorological office. This relatively straightforward structure gave way to a number of policy ministries; agencies charged with distributing (contestable) funding; and ten sector based institutes, the ‘Crown Research Institutes’, which are required (among other things) to operate as profit-making commercial enterprises
A claim will be advanced that the outcome of the dual reform processes referred to above has been perverse, in the sense of acknowledging and indeed establishing in legislation a requirement for high quality scientific and other support for environmental and resource management, while establishing an institutional and legislative regime of public good science that is less than adequate to fulfil that need. The paper will investigate the extent to which the result is an example of ‘policy failure’.