The sinking of the Manawanui: how the use of the words “own it, fix it, learn from it” by the Chief of Navy show this debacle is not just human error but – to anyone in the know – the most dramatic evidence possible of the failure of our senior public service under the leadership of former Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes.

In the press conference last Friday announding human error lay behind the sinking of the Manawanui, the Navy Chief said these words: “I want to reassure the public of New Zealand and Samoa that we will own it, fix it and learn from it.”

I kid you not, but an entire generation of the most senior public servants has been trained to say these exact words when a major failure hits the headlines. Here is what they really mean inside the public service to those who know how it really works.

1. I am standing up in front of you and saying “I own it, I will fix it, and I will learn from it” so that you think I am taking this seriously and that I am capable of dealing with this, so that you don’t ask me “how could you have allowed this to happen” and call for my dismissal.

2. I will not fix it but put a band-aid* on it, so that you think it is fixed. I will go on to say “I accept all the recommendations the inquiry into this fiasco has made and will implement all of them.” But I will not implement them properly, simply apply more band-aids so that I can say “I have implemented all the recommendations.” so that I do not lose my job.

3. I will definitely not learn from it because there’s no time for that. My job is putting band-aids on things so you don’t see how badly things are going. If you saw that, my Minister would be unhappy and I could lose my job (and where else would I get money like this for applying band-aids).

4. Next time there’s a disaster (as is inevitable under this way of operating), I will repeat steps 1-3.

It’s time for this farce to end. There needs to be a public inquiry into our senior public service and a new system put in place so it is led in a way that addresses the issues that matter to New Zealanders.

To anyone in the know, it is time for you to call this out publicly. A generation of New Zealanders has been failed. There are a handful of us calling it out, but not enough to make a difference. I plead with you to speak out.

Finally, anyone who knows me knows the failure of the senior public service to deliver a high-performing Oranga Tamariki is my most particular ‘beef’. In the irony of all ironies the former CE of the Ministry of Defence (ie a person heavily implicated in the sinking of the Manawanui) has just been appointed CE of OT. I have worked for him and he is a nice guy, but has been brought up in the Peter Hughes’ system. So there is no high-performing OT coming my way anytime soon.

Says it all really.

*’Band-aid’ is the least apposite metaphor possible, given a band-aid cannot begin to fix an actual hole in a ship. The literal failure of the metaphor in this case says the system’s time is up.

David King