“It’s not about the fricken targets.”
This outburst from our Prime Minister is shocking not because of the language choice, or because of the display of emotion, though both are noteworthy.
If you’ve been listening to our Prime CEO over the past year, you could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that actually, it is about the targets. After all, he’s talked about them a lot, and emphasises their importance when he set up the nine targets for his government’s term. In his press release earlier this year, he says,
“That’s why our Government is bringing back public service targets, to focus our public sector on driving better results for New Zealanders in health, education, law and order, work, housing, and the environment.
From this, I took the implication that the targets would produce better outcomes and so the practical focus could be put onto meeting achievable and measurable goals. But according to Luxon today, “It’s not about the targets”.
Perhaps it would be if the targets reflected on him better.
Luxon has spent his entire term attempting to convince the country that New Zealand’s public service has a management crisis that he is fixing. It’s not that there isn’t enough money, he claims, but it’s that things aren’t being run well enough.
“Part of why our Government is so focused on rebuilding the economy is so that we can afford to invest in the public services that New Zealanders deserve.
But we know that spending more money will not in itself deliver better results. Despite significant increases in spending under the previous government, New Zealanders got worse results from their public services.”
“Spending more money will not in itself deliver better results.” He’s so confident on this that he’s seen fit to take money out of the system and distribute it disproportionately to the wealthy. But now it apparently isn’t about the structure’s and measures he has sought to impose onto government in his quest to turn the public service into the profit service. It’s about the results.
Contrast this to today’s press conference, where Luxon said, “Guy, guys, no disrespect. It’s not about the frickin’ targets. It’s about outcomes.”
No disrespect, Prime Minister, but the outcomes aren’t looking good either.
What can I say, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Targets, smargets. The lessons: big rocks and complex systems are two entirely different things. Chunking complexity into ridiculously isolated targets is futile. Luxon could help himself immensely by reading up on leverage points. Perhaps read some System Dynamics books. Then, he wouldn’t push so hard trying to go in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, I fear he is out of his depth.
Luxon's entire position is irrational unless you believe in the thoroughly discredited economic dogma that originated in the Chicago School of Economics almost a century ago and is now being heartily pushed by the Atlas Foundation and all their acolytes, including our catastrophic coalition government. It follows that, given Luxon's fragile narcissistic ego, there will be more and more frantic and inconsistent bluster from him as the results of his shocking defunding of nearly everything become more and more obvious. I can't think of a single thing he's presided over that won't make life in Aotearoa worse. Quickly. Roll on 2026.