Roche gets the top job

The PM announced:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today announced the appointment of Sir Brian Roche as the next Public Service Commissioner. …

This is no surprise, except how long it took. Roche was, to many, the obvious person for the job. He has been a “fixer” for Governments of all stripes. His intensive experience for both private and public sectors has been:

• CEO of NZ Post
• Senior partner, PWC
• Head of successful bid team for 2011 Rugby World Cup
• Chief Crown negotiator for various Treaty settlements
• Chair of Hurricanes Rugby
• Chair of Antartica NZ
• Chair, Tait Electronics
• Chair, City Rail Link
• Inaugural Chair, Auckland Regional Transport Authority
• Inaugural Chair, NZ Transport Agency
• Deputy Commission, HB DHB
• Chair, Wellington Gateway Project (Transmission Gully)

The Government wants a change manager, not a status quo manager., So they didn’t want someone currently in a leadership role in the public service. But putting in an outsider with no public sector experience could be a bad fit. So Roche is ideal – he knows the public sector well but is someone whom the Government can trust to make the service more effective and efficient.

I suspect the reason it took so long to appoint him, is that he was very happy being semi-retired and the PM probably had to be very persuasive to convince him to take it up.

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