Mike O’Donnell: Trump highlights need to protect against political bias in government

Mike O’Donnell is a professional director, writer and strategy adviser, and a regular opinion contributor.

OPINION: Painless and classy, is how former United States president Donald Trump’s lawyers promised Tuesday’s corruption proceedings would be at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.

Painless and classy aren’t two words normally associated with Trump, and so it proved this week.

When he appeared on 34 felonies filed against him after an investigation into hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels, an adult movie actor; Trump not only pleaded not guilty, he also had a pretty good lash out at various parties.

His rants ranged from criticising the court venue as being unfair, to suggesting he was the victim of illegal leaks and calling on the prosecuting district attorney to be indicted. Then taking a pretty good crack at the judge. So perhaps not exactly painless and classy.

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Readers will recall the chaos and violence that ensued in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, after the ousting of Trump at the polls. A mob of his supporters literally attacked the United States physical seat of power after Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol building.

Trump told them they had to fight like hell or lose their country and that’s what they did. He’d already filed a number of lawsuits trying to convince state legislatures that the election results were phoney and to take action against any changes resulting from the election result.

As a former student of political science and resident of the United States, it was upsetting to watch. And a long way removed from the approach undertaken in Aotearoa to protect against corruption and political bias in the machinery of government.

I suspect that there are a few officials who have been looking at some of the overseas precedents about all the stuff that can go wrong, and making sure we double down on the careful side of the register as we approach the general election.

As a public and private sector director and also a writer/broadcaster of sorts, I’ve now had two formal approaches seeking to ensure that I understand neutrality and two asking me to disclose any political affiliation.

Given I’ve voted for just about every party, from Values to ACT, in my 35 years of voting that makes for a very broad disclosure but also one where I can honestly claim to have never been a member of any political party apart from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in my university days.

It’s a level of rigour I’ve never experienced before, but one that I’m pretty comfortable with in the approach to the pre-election period.

Here in New Zealand we formally enter the “pre-election” period on July 14, some 90 days before the general election date of October 14.

While the Government has the right to govern and make decisions right up until the election, to date successive governments have chosen to show restraint in the pre-election period from significant people appointments and around any government advertising. And to be fair they’ve been fairly successful at this.

In terms of deciding what counts as “significant” in this context, this typically means higher profile organisations, those with bigger budgets, larger asset bases or have a strongly strategic role for Aoteaora.

Whereas the pre-election time is more like a “gentleperson’s agreement” in Aoteaora, the post election time is more formally locked down.

After the election, the caretaker convention applies until a new administration is appointed. That means the old government is really just there to keep the existing pots on the boil before the new government is sworn in and able to take over (including rolling out new recipes or selecting new cooks).

One area that can be overlooked as the public service seek to remain vigorously neutral in the lead up to an election is how policy is developed or positioned. Policy being developed by officials cannot be used for party political material or labelled as “party policy”.

Likewise a “government policy” (supported by officials) needs to be confirmed through the Cabinet and the Cabinet committee decision-making processes, before being announced by a minister in their official capacity.

All this needs to happen before a minister can campaign on the basis of that policy. Of course, none of this stops political parties building new policies and promoting them as part of their election manifesto without any reference to official policy.

Over the coming months there will also be heavy scrutiny applied to social media use, government launches, any public consultation processes and government funded advertising.

If this is starting to sound a bit anal-retentive that’s because it has to be. For all the frustrations with our political system in godzone, it’s kept us clear of the electoral dysfunction we’ve seen in the United States.

Transparency Internationals recently released its latest Corruption Perceptions Index. This study ranked New Zealand first equal with Denmark out of 176 nations and territories when it came to perceptions of corruption in the government sector. That’s a handy place to be.

In fact some might even say, painless and classy.