Taxpayer Talk: Oliver Hartwich on restoring democratic control of the Public Service

In this episode of Taxpayer Talk, Peter Williams sits down with Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative, to discuss why he believes the country’s public service is "fundamentally broken" and incompatible with implementing good policy. Oliver explains how the 1988 reforms inadvertently created a state where department heads are more beholden to the Public Service Commissioner than their own ministers, and how the bureaucracy can subvert political will. Drawing on the German model of ministerial accountability, Oliver argues for a system that prioritises deep subject matter expertise over generic management skills to ensure that voters finally get a government with the power to perform its job. Support the show

You can listen to Taxpayer Talk: Oliver Hartwich on restoring democratic control of the Public Service online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Taxpayer Talk: Oliver Hartwich on restoring democratic control of the Public Service is an episode from Taxpayer Talk - podcast by the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union by New Zealand Taxpayers' Union Inc..

This episode is 39:25 long.

This episode was published on Apr 13, 2026.

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