Chapter 7: New Zealand Public Sector Management and Accounting Reforms: The Hidden Agenda

Financial management reforms in New Zealand were an integral part of a comprehensive transformation of the public sector, which was, in turn, part of wider economic, social, and constitutional changes. The speed and comprehensiveness of the financial management reforms allowed little time for scrutiny of the detailed rules, many of which developed at the largely hidden technical level. Examination of these details reveals biases and distortions in New Zealand’s public sector financial management system, which produce effects inconsistent with the stated objectives of the reforms, but highly consistent with a hidden privatization agenda. In a democracy, however, issues such as privatization and the appropriate size of government may be better addressed in open political debate rather than pursued via technical means hidden from public scrutiny.