A consolidated bureaucracy: 43 departments into 19

New Zealand runs 43 departments, which the document says is more than one and a half times what comparable countries carry, each with its own chief executive, communications team, HR and finance. They would be consolidated into 19, grouped around real policy domains so that one department owns an outcome rather than several sharing it. The document lists every current agency and the department it would land in.

78 ministerial portfolios would become 18. The argument is that splitting responsibility this far makes problems like housing and crime everyone’s job and nobody’s duty. Combined with the department mergers, each department would report to one minister for its budget and outcomes — with MCERT named as the exception.

The document’s stated problem is that ministers are accountable for delivery but neither appoint nor can remove the chief executives who implement their policies. Ministers would appoint departmental chief executives for a fixed term, renewable once, and could remove them for specified reasons such as non-performance or policy misalignment. Officials would keep public service protections and the right to return to a lower classified role.

It would no longer sit between ministers and key appointments. Its functions would move into the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The document is explicit that consolidation targets duplicated head-office functions — multiple communications offices, HR teams, finance teams and executive layers — and not nurses, teachers or police. Savings could go back to frontline services, to taxpayers, or to paying down debt.

The case draws on the “common pool” effect, where many ministers each control part of the budget and each has an incentive to expand their own spending while the cost spreads across all taxpayers. OECD panel studies are cited putting this at roughly 0.08 to 0.18 percent of GDP in additional deficit per spending minister, with a 58-country study and evidence from Swiss cantons pointing the same way. The document lists its sources, including a 2025 New Zealand Initiative report applying the research here.