NZ Council for Civil Liberties

Open Government Partnership — Comments on draft commitments and draft 5th National Action Plan

Since 2021, the Council has participated in the development of New Zealand’s National Action Plans as a member of the Open Government Partnership.

In 2025 we did so again, starting by writing to the (then) Minister for the Public Service in April, together with a number of other civil society organisations. We put forward a number of suggestions for areas where we thought the current government might be interested in developing commitments. Four months later, Te Kawa Mataaho | the Public Service Commission announced that the Government had decided to limit the scope of the 5th National Action Plan to projects that would help advance the Commission’s ‘Action Plan to strengthen Public Service Integrity‘.

One information session and three workshops were held online during the process of the Commission refining its proposed commitments. There were no face-to-face events, either in Wellington or in other parts of the country. The 5th National Action Plan was published on 19 December 2025.

As well as participating in these online workshops, NZCCL provided two pieces of written feedback to the Commission: comments on the draft commitments, and comments on the draft Action Plan. Both are published here. Click on the links below to read them.

Comments on draft commitments

28 November 2025

Following the online workshop on 26 November 2025 to discuss the draft commitments proposed by the government, I am writing to provide the Council’s written feedback on them.

Overall

To only have four commitments in the National Action Plan (NAP) may be realistic in terms of the government’s failure to fund any additional work, but it is another depressing sign, not just of the lack of ambition on the part of ministers, but also of the failure to act on the scale of the issues facing New Zealand. The country is significantly falling behind those we would regard as our peers in terms of a regulated regime for proactive disclosure of information, citizen participation, and accountability. From the Council’s perspective all three impact on people’s liberties and rights at a time when our democracy and these rights are increasingly under attack.

Consultation on the draft NAP prior to submission to the OGP

In previous NAP development cycles, the government has abided by the OGP’s expectation that there is a minimum two week public consultation period on the draft NAP before it is submitted to the OGP.

We understand the Public Service Commission is not proposing to do that this time. This is unacceptable. While the partial text of draft commitments has been shared publicly, these did not spell out the milestones for undertaking the work, nor identify which non-government organisations or individuals the lead agencies for each commitment would work with during delivery of the commitment. Furthermore, the Commission has not shared any draft of the introductory text of the NAP, nor the Minister’s foreword. The draft NAP has therefore not been publicly shared.

The government’s decision to delegate sign-off of the NAP to the Minister for the Public Service, instead of it being a Cabinet decision, should mean that there is more time available for public consultation, not less. If less time before the OGP’s formal submission date of 31 December 2025 remains in reality, this is because the Commission itself did not start public work on NAP development until 11 September 2025 (as notified in the 25 August 2025 newsletter).

It would be completely inappropriate for the department that administers the Public Service Act to fail to fulfil its statutory duty to ‘foster a culture of open government’ by not consulting the public on the draft NAP. Not meeting this standard will further undermine public confidence in the Commission and its Integrity, Ethics and Standards team. Such confidence clearly needs rebuilding after its secret efforts in 2024 to lobby ministers to withdraw from the Open Government Partnership.

The Council recommends that the Commission notify the OGP that it will be submitting the final text of the 5th NAP in January 2026, in order to run a two week public consultation on the draft text before the Christmas 2025 break.

Adding further commitments later in the NAP’s lifespan

All four of the commitments proposed by the government are limited in scope and deliverables, and are capable of being completed within 6-9 months after work has started. Experience shows that work on them will begin in February, after the summer break. This means that they should be completed by September 2026.

The Council recommends that in the introductory text of the plan, it is clearly stated that the Open Government Partnership (OGP) is happy for countries to add further co-created commitments during the lifespan of a NAP. This would be a clear signal to the government that takes office after the 2026 general election that there is an opportunity for it to put its own stamp on work in this area.

Recommendations for the draft commitments

We understand our representative in the 26 November workshop provided verbal feedback as to how the draft commitments could be strengthened. So that these are formally on the record, we recap these below.

Commitment 1 — Review protected disclosure practice

The ‘Problem Definition’ section of this draft commitment states that ‘The 2025 Public Service Census also indicated that public servants don’t always feel safe to speak up about issues’. Awareness of the law and its theoretical protections is high (90%), but almost a third (30%) do not feel safe to speak up about wrongdoing.

Despite this, the ‘What are the causes of the problem?’ section does not address this core issue of officials not feeling it is safe to make use of the law. As a result, the ‘Practice review’ proposed in the ‘What solution are you proposing?’ section does not include research or investigation of why officials do not feel safe in speaking up. This means it is unlikely the practice review will explore this, resulting in yet another missed opportunity to improve practice or make recommendations for legislative strengthening of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act. Similarly the section on ‘What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment?’ section does not include an outcome of ‘More than 90% of public servants are very confident that it is safe to raise a concern about wrongdoing’.

We recommend the text of these aspects of the commitment are revised to ensure it addresses a key barrier to the law achieving its purpose.

In terms of non-government participation in implementation of the commitment, the Council recommends that:

  1. The Commission establishes a multistakeholder working group for the commitment so that it can provide input on people the officials conducting the review can speak to, as well as providing feedback on draft questions, and the draft report of the review.
  2. The review should seek information from the Law Society (especially any committee on employment law. It should ask all government agencies’ legal teams to provide the names and contact details they hold for lawyers they have dealt with who are representing public servants who have tried to make use of the Protected Disclosures Act, and then speak to these lawyers. The review should also ask the Ombudsman, Auditor-General and other ‘appropriate authorities’ (including those listed in Schedule 2 of the 2022 Act to contact those who have approached them under the Act and provide them with details of the commitment and how and when they can provide input to it.
  3. The review should also contact civil society organisations (either via a DIA database or using its own research) to ask what their experience is of people approaching them with potential whistleblowing issues. Suggestions include Community Law Centres, the Citizens Advice Bureau, ourselves, Amnesty International, Transparency International NZ, the PSA, and others that these organisations might in turn suggest to you. It should also contact the Protect charity in the United Kingdom that advises whistleblowers and employers,1https://protect-advice.org.uk/ as well as the Government Accountability Project in the United States,2https://whistleblower.org/ and experts like Kieran Pender at the Human Rights Law Centre in Australia.3https://www.hrlc.org.au/

Commitment 2 — Develop a Corruption Assessment Tool

Based on the problem definition and proposed action to be taken as part of this commitment, the title of this commitment needs to be amended. The tool proposed will not assess actual corruption, merely the risk of it occurring in an organisation. We therefore recommend that a more accurate title for the commitment is ‘Develop a Corruption Risk Assessment Tool’. Similar language changes will need to be made to the rest of the commitment as well.

The Council also believes the ‘Commitment Analysis’ table could be strengthened. The box on ‘How will the commitment promote transparency?’ is currently marked as ‘N/A’. The ‘solution’ being proposed in the commitment description is that ‘The Serious Fraud Office will design and make available a Corruption Assessment Tool’. If ‘make available’ means ‘publish’ — as it undoubtedly should — then the commitment will in fact help to promote transparency. Not only by making the risk assessment tool available for public scrutiny, but since reading the assessment tool may well inform Parliamentary questions to the government, select committee inquiries, and Official Information Act (OIA) requests.

Similarly, the ‘How will the commitment help foster accountability?’ box could be amended to reflect the fact that publication of the tool will facilitate independent scrutiny as to whether agencies have made use of it.

Unfortunately, the box on ‘How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing and monitoring solutions?’ is all backward looking, by suggesting that previous research will inform the work to identify risks. In reality, forms of corruption never stand still, and so the tool itself needs to build in advice for agencies to draw on non-government expertise on an ongoing basis.

We recommend the draft commitment is amended to reflect these issues.

As with commitment 1, we recommend that the Serious Fraud Office establishes a multistakeholder working group for the commitment so that it can provide input on creating the Risk Assessment Tool and review drafts.

Commitment 3 — Support ethical government – private sector career transitions

Although the existing text refers to people moving from the private sector to government, the dominant message from the text is that it is more concerned about movements from government to the private sector. For example, in the ‘Problem definition’ box, the phrase ‘(in either direction)’ should be moved up to the first sentence.

In the same box, there is a sub-heading ‘Public trust risk’. There is a public trust risk, but more importantly there is an actual corruption and integrity risk, and this must be detailed in the problem definition box; it is not that the public may misunderstand what is going on and therefore lose trust, it is that there are clear examples of poor — and likely unlawful — practice already undermining the integrity of public policy making.

The Council recommends that the ‘Problem definition’ box of the draft commitment be amended to address these issues.

The weaknesses of the problem definition stage of the commitment are reflected in the ‘What solution are you proposing?’ section. This says that the document to be produced by the Commission and Ministry of Justice will ‘explore the public trust risks of, and disincentives to, government-private sector transitions’. The Council recommends that this wording be amended to say the document will explore the corruption risks of such transitions, based on inappropriate sharing of information, inappropriate influence which leads to the narrowing of policy options to be considered for an issue (or choice of frameworks for analysis), and inappropriate privileging of people and companies in both procurement and short-term contracting. The commitment should state that it will particularly need to look at the risks when people move from regulated industries to the regulator and vice-versa.

The Council also recommends that the commitment explicitly refer to studying regulatory regimes for this issue in other countries, and in particular mechanisms in place that regulate these transitions and report on them; for example the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments in the UK, and its successor.4https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/advisory-committee-on-business-appointments

This section of the document does not explicitly say that the discussion document will be published, nor that there will be a published analysis of the feedback on the discussion document, nor even that the feedback will be published. The former is implied in the answer to question 8 in the ‘Commitment analysis’ section, but our experience is that things should never be left implicit, and need to be explicitly included in the commitment actions. We recommend that this be reflected in the proposed solutions section of the commitment as well as in the commitment milestones.

In section 3 — ‘What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment?’ — the proposed achievements also reflect the focus on risk of public confidence, rather than actual improper transitions. This again pretends that the problem is with the public perceiving things that aren’t actually an issue, pre-judging the function of this commitment and suggesting that everything is rosy. The Council recommends that this section clearly state that an object is to reduce actual improper transitions, misuse of information, inappropriate privileging of people and companies in procurement and contracting activities. The commitment needs to say explicitly that the overall objective is to ensure the integrity of policy making processes.

We strongly recommend that one of the commitment milestones is that the analysis of feedback on the discussion document is completed before October 2026, so that it can be cited in briefings to the incoming Ministers of Justice and Public Service, along with options for how to proceed.

As with commitments 1 and 2, we recommend that the Commission and Ministry establish a multistakeholder working group for the commitment so that it can provide input on creating the Risk Assessment Tool and review drafts. Key expertise in this field exists in civil society organisations and academia, and it will undermine the quality of analysis and recommended proposals if these experts are not involved in development of the discussion document.

Commitment 4 — Explore options to improve transparency of senior leaders’ conflicts of interest

This commitment focuses on ‘senior leaders’ in the public service. This traditionally means Chief Executives and their Deputies, and possibly down to the third tier of agency management. But in the Public Service Amendment Bill, the Government seeks to give the Public Service Commissioner veto rights over the appointment of people to ‘key positions’ across all public service agencies, as well as rights to object to any restructuring in a government agency that might affect a ‘key position’.

Almost by definition, if a position is important enough for the Commissioner to have rights in relation to the post and its holder, it is important for accountability and integrity purposes that we know what all of these roles are and how any conflicts of interest the post-holder may have are being managed.

The Council recommends that the scope of this commitment be redrafted to make clear that ‘senior leaders’ also includes all ‘key positions’.

The draft commitment is muddled because although it says it wants to achieve more ‘transparency about senior public servants’ conflicts of interest’ and ‘greater public access to information’ about them, the ‘Commitment analysis’ section make clear that these outcomes are dependent on the options scoped: publication of senior public servants’ interests and conflicts of interests is not guaranteed by any means.

The Council recommends that in the stages described in the ‘What solution are you proposing?’ section, stage one should also research conflict of interest management in countries besides those listed. It should explicitly list Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, but should also state that it will research countries that OECD evidence on this topic indicates have high integrity systems for conflict of interest management, such as perhaps Singapore.

We also recommend that stage two should explicitly state that the consultation on options to enhance transparency will be a public consultation, not just with agencies’ preferred and handpicked consultees. As with other commitments, this one must commit to publication of the submissions received on the consultation document, and the Commission’s analysis of the submissions.

As with commitments 1, 2 and 3, we recommend that the Commission establish a multistakeholder working group for the commitment so that it can provide input on the research, option scoping and implementation. Key expertise in this field exists in civil society organisations and academia, and it will undermine the quality of analysis and recommended proposals if these experts are not involved in development of the discussion document.

Multistakeholder Forum

The Council fundamentally disagrees with the Commission’s position that the input of a few non-government organisations and individuals during development of the NAP is a valid substitute for a genuine multi-stakeholder forum. A genuine multi-stakeholder forum to oversee delivery of this NAP and development of future NAPs must be established.

We have pointed out to the Commission that we consider Statistics NZ’s quarterly hui with organisations to be valuable. We presume the department finds it valuable too. We again encourage the Commission to speak to senior Statistics NZ officials that have participated in the hui. We also note that nobody receives any fees or attendance allowance for participating in the hui, so the cost to the agency is extremely limited.

We strongly believe that the section 12(1)(d) of the Public Service Act requirement to ‘foster a culture of open government’ means that the Commission should be leading by example in relation to creating formal structures for non-government participation. The fact that the Commission has now added to its own website an acknowledgement that ‘open government’ means “high standards of governance and citizen participation in government that characterise a strong democracy” strengthens our belief that the Commission should be modelling good practice. The fact that ministers in this government are not keen on citizen participation does not absolve the Commissioner of his statutory duty.

We would be happy to clarify anything set out above if needed, and expect to be invited to participate in oversight of and research for at least commitment one, as this fundamentally concerns the right to freedom of expression and constraints on and enablers for exercise of this right.

Ngā mihi,

Thomas Beagle

Chair

Comments on the draft 5th National Action Plan

8 December 2025

Following publication on 2 December 2025 of the draft National Action Plan (NAP), I am writing to provide the Council’s feedback on it.

Consultation on the draft NAP prior to submission to the OGP

The Council welcomes the fact that the Public Service Commission (PSC) changed its plan not to consult on the draft NAP. It published the draft NAP on 2 December 2025, and requested feedback by 8 December 2025. This is a short consultation period and we note that in previous NAP development cycles, the government has abided by the OGP’s expectation that there is a minimum two week public consultation period on the draft NAP before it is submitted to the OGP.

Adding further commitments later in the NAP’s lifespan

We previously recommended that in the introductory text of the plan, it is clearly stated that the Open Government Partnership (OGP) is happy for countries to add further co-created commitments during the lifespan of a NAP. This would be a clear signal to the government that takes office after the 2026 general election that there is an opportunity for it to put its own stamp on work in this area. At least three out of the four commitments proposed by the government are capable of being completed within 6-9 months after work has started. Experience shows that work on them will begin in February, after the summer break. This means that they should be completed by October 2026 at the latest.

We are pleased that the PSC has acted on this recommendation by making reference to this opportunity for the next government, in the final ‘Implementing the plan’ section of the NAP. We recommend the PSC makes explicit reference to this possibility in its briefing to its incoming Minister later next year.

Recommendations for the Introduction

The draft NAP contains an Introduction to set the Action Plan in New Zealand’s context. On page 5 the end of the third paragraph makes the claim that the NAP “will also support New Zealand in meeting its international obligations to tackle corruption.” These obligations are not listed, nor is a document listing them cited in a footnote. We recommend this omission is rectified. Otherwise, this sentence reads as an empty, unevidenced, claim.

The introduction suggests that civil society organisations were content with the Government and PSC’s unilateral decision to constrain the possible commitments to those that would help the PSC deliver its Action Plan to strengthen integrity 2025-2028. This is not the case, particularly for NZCCL. The Government’s decision was made without the Minister for Public Service taking up civil society’s request to meet with her to discuss the Action Plan, and is contrary to the spirit of the OGP’s commitment to co-creation and once again demonstrates that after a decade of membership and four Action Plans, New Zealand’s government still does not ‘get it’. A narrow, bureaucratic, type of compliance with OGP membership will never deliver the transformational results that the OGP hopes to stimulate and that Aotearoa needs.

The Council would have wanted commitments to strengthen or completely overhaul the Official Information Act, to introduce beneficial ownership and open contracting, to explore strengthening public participation in legislative processes and to adopt an all-of-government mandatory standard on public consultation. We still want a commitment to explore accession to the UN’s Aarhus Convention on public access to information, participation in decision making and access to justice on environmental issues.

Recommendations for Our journey — the development of NAP5

This section states that “The Commission reached out to a variety of CSOs, including those some who had not previously been involved in OGP.” This is ungrammatical and needs correcting. Further, no information is provided about the Government and PSC’s publicity efforts.

There was no media release announcing the opportunity to participate in development of NAP5, either on the PSC’s website or the Beehive website.1The failure of the Commission to emulate even its 2021 media release is particularly disappointing. https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/news/new-zealanders-urged-to-join-the-open-government-conversation

There is no indication of newspaper, radio or social advertisements having been bought by the PSC, nor in what geographic areas or target demographics. Overall, this section is particularly thin on what the PSC actually did to reach potential NAP development participants. Given the PSC’s disgraceful decision not to establish a Multi-stakeholder Forum (MSF), the Council recommends further detailed information about PSC’s work to publicise opportunities for participation be included in this section of the NAP.

In the “Timeline of NAP5 co-creation”, the PSC should add in more specific dates in a number of places:

  • The “proposed approach to NAP5 was published on the Commission website” was sent out by email on 25 August 2025. This makes clear to readers that there was only a week from this first announcement until the information session on 4 September 2025.
  • The bullet point for “officials published the draft commitments and provided reasoned responses for why other commitments [sic] ideas will not progress” needs to have the date it was notified by email to participants added. This was 14 November 2025.
  • The bullet point for “officials published updated commitments including draft milestones” needs to have the date it was notified by email to participants added. This was 2 December 2025.

Recommendations for Our commitments

The introductory sentence in this section states that “NAP5 is a balanced and practical plan for progress towards New Zealand’s open government ambitions.” Besides the fact that NAP5 only really addresses the government’s woefully low ambitions, and not those of civil society, we query the use of the word ‘balanced’. Balanced in what way? Balanced against what?

Commitment 1 — Review protected disclosure practice

We note that the following sentence has been added to the bottom of page 10 following our feedback of 28 November 2025: ‘As noted above, potential disclosers may lack confidence that they will be adequately protected. Appropriate authorities / receivers of protected disclosures could use information from the Public Service Census and feedback from disclosers to identify where best to target resources or strengthen processes to further reinforce that it is safe to speak up.’

This is weak and needs to be strengthened in the final version of the NAP. We recommend that at the very least the permissive ‘could’ be changed to the more positive ‘should’. As a result, we recommend that the ‘Practice review’ proposed in the ‘What solution are you proposing?’ section should be strengthened to explicitly include research or investigation of why officials do not feel safe in speaking up. A failure to do this would mean it is likely the practice review will not explore this, resulting in yet another missed opportunity to improve practice or make recommendations for legislative strengthening of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act.

On page 12, in the section ‘What solution are you proposing?’ the language relating to a community of practice on protected disclosures has been watered down from the earlier draft of the commitment. By adding in the word ‘practicality’ and removing ‘seek’, the PSC seems to be suggesting that there is some doubt about whether it is practical to establish a community of practice. Further, by removing the verb ‘seek’, it suggests the PSC will be passive in its assessment of interest in the establishment of a community of practice, instead of actively contacting the relevant organisations to promote the idea. The Council recommends that ‘practicality’ is deleted and ‘seek’ is reinserted into the relevant sentence.

The section on ‘What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment?’ section has an outcome of ‘Improved confidence that disclosures will be protected’ but this does not address the problem of public servants feeling unsafe in making a disclosure. The discloser also needs to be protected, not just the information disclosed. We strongly recommend an additional outcome of ‘More than 90% of public servants are very confident that it is safe to raise a concern about wrongdoing’.

In the box on ‘Co-creation analysis’ on page 13, the draft NAP states that “Stakeholders suggested an advisory group could support the practice review…”. This is inaccurate as far as the Council’s recommendations to the PSC. We recommended — and continue to recommend — that the Commission establishes a multi-stakeholder working group for the commitment overall, not the practice review itself. This would mean the multi-stakeholder working group can provide input on people the officials conducting the review can speak to, as well as providing feedback on draft questions, and the draft report of the review. It would also be able to provide input into the research the PSC says it will undertake on the consequences for organisations that unlawfully retaliate against whistleblowers, and could also contribute to the action on a community of practice.

In relation to the milestones for the commitment, the PSC has given itself a somnolent and lackadaisical timeframe to complete this small and unambitious commitment. It has given itself until June 2026 to even scope the project and identify a project lead when this should be complete by the end of February 2026 (as is the case with the SFO and commitment 2). Similarly, the desk research milestone should be completed by June 2026, the engagement with agencies by July 2026, the scoping of a community of practice by August 2026, and the establishing of the community of practice by September 2026. The draft practice review report should be published by the end of September 2026, with feedback incorporated by October 2026. This will position the PSC to provide well-researched advice to the incoming Minister after the 2026 general election. The ‘stretch activities’ should be included in this advice, also by the end of October 2026.

We recommend the following additional milestones:

  1. PSC communicating to agencies by April 2026 about reviewing their Public Service Census results and whistleblower feedback to inform where they should target resources and strengthen processes; and
  2. PSC compiling agency responses from this review and producing additional guidance of its own to agencies by November 2026.

Commitment 2 — Develop a Corruption Risk Assessment Tool

We welcome PSC acting on our recommendation to change the title and deliverable of this commitment from a ‘Corruption Assessment Tool’ to a ‘Corruption Risk Assessment Tool’.

In the box for ‘Supporting Stakeholders’ on page 17 we recommend that the Law Society and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand are added, since these are the organisations representing professionals most likely to be undertaking risks of corruption in their organisation.

As with commitment 1, we recommend that the Serious Fraud Office establishes a multi-stakeholder working group for the commitment so that it can provide input on creating the Risk Assessment Tool and review drafts.

In relation to the milestones, it seems weak to allow seven months between seeking feedback from agencies who have tested the working version of the Tool (November 2026) and publication of the final Tool in June 2027. We recommend that this latter milestone is brought forward to March 2027, with insights from the roll-out of the Tool being shared by the SFO by end of June 2027.

Commitment 3 — Support ethical government – private sector career transitions

We are surprised and disappointed that the ‘Supporting Stakeholders’ box on page 23 does not include the Office of the Auditor-General and recommend this omission is corrected.

In the ‘Problem Definition’ box, the sub-heading still refers to a ‘Public trust risk’ when, as we made clear in our feedback of 28 November, there is a more important an actual corruption and integrity risk, and this must be detailed in the problem definition box; it is not that the public may misunderstand what is going on and therefore lose trust, it is that there are clear examples of poor — and likely unlawful — practice already undermining the integrity of public policy making.

The Council again recommends that the ‘Problem definition’ box of the draft commitment be amended to address these issues.

The failure to strengthen the problem definition still feeds through into the ‘What solution are you proposing?’ section. The Council again recommends that this wording be amended to say the document will explore the corruption risks of such transitions, based on inappropriate sharing of information, inappropriate influence which leads to the narrowing of policy options to be considered for an issue (or choice of frameworks for analysis), and inappropriate privileging of people and companies in both procurement and short-term contracting. The commitment should state that it will particularly need to look at the risks when people move from regulated industries to the regulator and vice-versa.

We welcome the addition of the words ‘tools to’ this part of the commitment, since it makes clear there must be instruments to deal with these issues, not simply guidance.

The Council notes that the PSC has failed to act on our recommendation that the commitment explicitly refer to studying regulatory regimes for this issue in other countries, and in particular mechanisms in place that regulate these transitions and report on them; for example the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments in the UK, and its successor.2https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/advisory-committee-on-business-appointments This is contrary to the assertion made in the ‘How did the co-creation process inform development of this commitment?’ box on page 27, where the PSC asserts without evidence that ‘In response, the Public Service Commission and the Ministry of Justice worked together to expand the scope of the commitment’. Our analysis of the text of the commitment in the draft NAP shows no such expansion from the previous draft.

In section 3 of the ‘Commitment Description’ the first of the proposed achievements has been weakened. The text has been changed from ‘Improved transparency of the factors influencing government decision making in New Zealand’ to ‘Understand the factors influencing government decision making in New Zealand.’ Improved transparency is a public-facing outcome of the commitment, but ‘understanding’ may refer only to an internal government outcome. If PSC wants to keep the focus on ‘understanding’, then it should change the wording to ‘Improved public understanding of…’

However, all these outcomes still reflect the PSC’s focus being on the risks of public confidence, rather than actual improper transitions. This again pretends that the problem is with the public perceiving things that aren’t actually an issue, pre-judging the function of this commitment and suggesting that everything is rosy. The Council recommends that this section clearly state that an object is to reduce actual improper transitions, misuse of information, inappropriate privileging of people and companies in procurement and contracting activities. The commitment needs to say explicitly that the overall objective is to ensure the integrity of policy making processes. This how the commitment could actually match the rhetoric used in the NAP’s Introduction of ‘support[ing] New Zealand in meeting its international obligations to tackle corruption.’

The expected completion dates for the milestones of this commitment are still ‘tbc’, which is not good enough. The Council recommends that the milestone for refining and scoping the project should be completed by no later than March 2026. The milestone for establishing a reference group should be April 2026. The background research milestone should be completed by July 2026, with the draft discussion document published by the end of August 2026. The results of the public consultation should be published by the end of October 2026, as we recommended on 28 November, so that it can be cited in briefings to the incoming Ministers of Justice and Public Service, along with options for how to proceed.

As with commitments 1 and 2, we recommend that the Commission and Ministry establish a multistakeholder working group for the commitment.

Commitment 4 — Explore options to improve transparency of senior leaders’ conflicts of interest

This commitment focuses on ‘senior leaders’ in the public service. In our feedback of 28 November we recommended that this commitment also refer to the ‘key positions’ that will be designated by the Commissioner following enactment of the Public Service Amendment Bill. We are disappointed that the PSC has not adopted this recommendation nor provided reasons why it has not.

The Council is disappointed that the PSC has weakened ‘What solution are you proposing?’ section, by removing the clearly defined stages of the commitment. Instead of clear stages one, two and three, there is weaker text that only states ‘Solutions might include the development of a public register of senior leader’s [sic] declared interests and/or management plans, or an independent review process, or other ideas that emerge during this research.’

Similarly, in the results from the commitment, the language has also been weakened, from wanting to achieve ‘Improved transparency of senior public servants’ conflicts of interest’ to only ‘Improved transparency of information about senior public servants’ conflicts of interest’. This means that instead of delivering transparency of the actual (and perceived) conflicts of interest, the public may only receive meaningless waffle about them.

Further, the PSC has ignored the Council’s 28 November recommendation that stage one should also research conflict of interest management in countries besides Australia, Canada and the UK. None of those countries have a great track record on openness and integrity, and it is revealing of PSC’s Anglophone and Westminster-system biases that it continues to ignore work done by the OECD, and high integrity countries such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Singapore on this topic. None of these countries are listed amongst the ‘Others’ in the ‘Supporting Stakeholders’ box on page 30.

By removing the separate stages from ‘What solution are you proposing’ the PSC has also missed the opportunity to explicitly state that the consultation on options to enhance transparency will be a public consultation, not just with agencies’ preferred and handpicked consultees. As with other commitments, this one must commit to publication of the submissions received on the consultation document, and the Commission’s analysis of the submissions.

In the milestones for this commitment, the dates are again unambitious. There is no way it should take until June 2026 for the project to be scoped and a project lead identified. This first milestone should be completed by mid-March 2026. The reference group should be established by mid-April 2026. The desk research and interviews should be completed by July 2026, and the countries listed above should be added to those where international comparisons will be drawn from, not just Australia, the UK and Canada. The discussion document should be published by the end of August 2026, and the results made available by the end of October 2026, with advice to the Minister ready for the general election, and no later than December 2026.

We are glad to see that — for this commitment at least — the text of the draft commitment has been amended to make clear that the ‘reference group’ will include civil society representatives.

Ngā mihi,

Thomas Beagle

Chair