Behind the scenes of Cabinet

Behind the big names and big decisions are crucial people quietly making sure the machinery of government runs well. 

Previously on The House, we’ve described the secretariat that runs Parliament; overseeing the House, managing its legislation and its various committees.

A similar secretariat quietly keeps order at the two hearts of government (Cabinet and Executive Council). As above, so below (or vice versa).

Twin secretariats; equally vital, similarly invisible, and both staffed with some of the (quietly) cleverest among us. 

Multiple hats

Rachel Hayward holds two official titles simultaneously: Secretary of the Cabinet and Clerk of the Executive Council – two interlinked and overlapping roles.

“They have been held separately in the past,” she explains, “I think at one stage a decision was made that there wasn't enough for two people to do – back in the 40s.”

That’s not the case anymore by a margin. Now there is a team of 25 run by Rachel Hayward. It’s a surprisingly small team considering. It’s called the Cabinet Office and is within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 

Exploring Rachel Hayward’s twin roles is a useful way to see how government works at the very highest level – both the Cabinet and the little known Executive Council. 

But let’s begin with location, specifically the room where decisions happen.

The Cabinet room

I chatted with Rachel Hayward about her two roles in the Cabinet room, the place where the Cabinet meets. The Cabinet room is on the top floor of the Beehive, inside that dark cap that crowns the Beehive with menacing fins. That’s a floor higher than the prime minister’s office.

If you look closely at the Beehive’s 10th floor from the outside you can see there are a few windows hidden behind the fins – but they are not windows into the Cabinet room. The Cabinet room has alcoves but no windows. It is in the centre of the building, encircled by the offices that house Hayward’s team.

The room is slightly ovoid, and so is the enormous doughnut-shaped table that occupies much of it. The atmosphere here is unusually hushed.   

“Yeah, the acoustics are amazing in here”, says Hayward, “if you were sitting across the other side of the room Phil you'd notice that just speaking at an ordinary level, you'd be able to hear everything that I said really clearly.”

The acoustics really are great; a function of the off-round shape with its alcoves, the sound absorbent paneling, and the clever combination of a baffle suspended above the table and a circle of stone on the floor below. Someone really thought this through.

I suggest to Hayward that it must be really loud when ministers shout. 

“There’s not a lot of shouting,” she says with a smile, and I believe her. It would almost feel wrong to raise your voice here. The room has a slightly hallowed feel. 

Which sovereign?

At the end of the room opposite the prime minister’s seat are royal portraits, but of the wrong royals. They are still of Elizabeth and Philip. 

“We haven't got official portraits yet of the King and the Queen Consort. They'll come in time.”

Apparently the official portraits of the sovereign that you see in government buildings are specifically New Zealand portraits in which they wear the medals, sashes and paraphernalia appropriate to be the ‘King of New Zealand’ as distinct from Australia, Canada or somewhere else. Getting that updated will require a royal portrait session with a lot of costume changes. 

Also in this room is one of the very few sets of printed New Zealand legislation that are still actively kept up to date (yes, someone literally cuts and pastes the amendments). Legislation today is more usefully kept online but it doesn’t pay to put all the eggs in one e-basket. 

The physical seal (arp, arp)

Most surprisingly, in an alcove there is an ancient looking mechanical press, such as Gutenberg might have used. This one is not for printing though, it is for embossing the “Seal of New Zealand” onto documents that require it, such as Ministerial Warrants and Orders in Council (which we will get to later). 

Certain official documents with the imprimatur of the Sovereign don’t just get a water-mark or some fancy letter-head, they get a physically pressed embossing.   

While that might sound slightly medieval it is still done and done here. There is even a special Act of Parliament to cover it.

The person with the responsibility to manage the seal is the Clerk of the Executive Council – Rachel Hayward. 

Apparently during the Kaikoura earthquake the embossing press jumped off its table and broke. Hayward laughs and describes this as a minor constitutional crisis. 

It is an extraordinary object. A connection to a more mechanical past, just a step removed from pressing a signet ring into wax. 

Steering the waka of state

Indeed, the whole room is fascinating, even the entrance. Above the door is an ornately carved Hoe Urunga (the steering paddle of a waka). It was carved by Clive Fugill and presented to the Cabinet back in 1981. Its placement refers to Cabinet’s role in steering the ‘waka of state’. 

It is an aspect of the Cabinet room that make it feel both quite Kiwi and not very colonial (unlike Parliament House with its 150 years of portraits).

What is Cabinet?

The Secretary of the Cabinet is “responsible for the administration of the Cabinet system”, says Hayward. 

That sounds simple but what is that system and how does it intersect with the Executive Council, the governor general and Parliament? 

Despite being at the centre of government decision-making Cabinet is described as ‘informal’. So why aren’t jandals in the dress code?

“Cabinet is held together by a number of conventions, and it's really well established, but… it's not a statutory creation. It's not a ‘creature of statute’ is the phrase that people use.”

In short, Cabinet only exists because it is useful. It isn’t a formal statutory body like Parliament or the Executive Council. Its existence is informal and it has accreted rules via practice (convention) and self-regulation rather than through law. 

The birth of Cabinets

Here is how I image the earliest days of what became Cabinet.

In the days when sovereigns were more powerful and capricious the men (always men) who advised the crown would attend audiences with the sovereign with the hope of convincing the king/queen of their plans – to get the ‘seal of approval’. (Probably a literal seal – some things don’t change.)

If those advisors weren’t complete idiots they would meet together first to agree among themselves what they were going to ask for and how. Success (and maybe safety) required a unified front. So they would meet together quietly to discuss and  argue the options, and having reached a consensus would present their decision to the Sovereign. The French word for small private room (such as might be safe for advisors to meet) is a cabinet. 

Those pre-meetings were the precursor to Cabinet and that need for a unified front is what is now called collective cabinet responsibility. Not following the “one-for-all” rule is what got Stuart Nash kicked off the team.

The key take-away is that Cabinet is not where the power comes from, it is where the pre-meeting happens. The execution of Cabinet’s decision will happen elsewhere and will usually involve someone else signing off on that decision.

Only decisions matter

The main job of Cabinet is to make decisions. The core role of the Secretary to the Cabinet is to record those decisions. The Secretary doesn’t take detailed minutes of the arguments though, all that matters is the outcome.

“We take working notes. Papers come up that will have a series of recommendations. And so the minute will reflect the recommendations that were contained in the paper and any changes that have taken place. So we just keep track of what the discussion is… but yeah, there's no formal record taken.”

Cabinets within Cabinet: the Cabinet committee

Also key to how it works: Cabinet is not where decisions begin. Hayward's team also facilitates another level below Cabinet – the Cabinet committees. There are 11 of them.

“Cabinet itself could not get through all the business in one meeting on a Monday. So there's an enormous amount of work goes through during the week as well. So each of those Cabinet committees will meet and will have different subject matter  expertise. They all process papers as well, and then those decisions that have been made by the committees come through for sign off at cabinet. And most of those will get ticked through, but there might be something significant where the committee chair has felt that actually the whole of Cabinet should look at this; so that paper will come up directly to Cabinet.”

The Cabinet committees are where most of the detail is considered. Cabinet as a whole would never have the time to debate across the gamut of government. 

Behind these proposals is a galaxy of research, consideration, and argument from ministries. The purpose of all of this is to help ministers make the best possible decisions underpinned with the best possible information. But everything is ultimately decided by the ministers (not the experts, nor academics). 

As a result ministers have enormous reading loads to keep on top of their areas of responsibility, and to be effective they must read and retain boggling amounts of information. Managing the flow of that information and keeping it effective is a role of the secretariat who even have a manual on how and what to submit.

To stay sane ministers stick to their own and their committee’s area. Except for the prime minister who must try to stay sufficiently abreast of the detail to be able to answer questions in the House on… well, almost anything.

And again, (similarly to Parliament’s select committees) each Cabinet committee is also staffed by the secretariat run by Hayward.

Cabinet has no power… 

Collectively, Cabinet has no power. It is a meeting of powerful people but their power is held individually, not collectively.

Power in New Zealand resides primarily with the Sovereign, who delegates that authority to individual ministers and to parliament (though big decisions they make are still also signed off by the governor general).

Hayward explains:

“Cabinet will make decisions. For those decisions to have the force of law (where they require laws to implement them), there's kind of two options. One is going through Parliament. So Cabinet might make decisions that then translate into bills and they then go off to Parliament.”

They become government legislation, are debated by MPs and if passed by Parliament, are signed into law by the governor general. 

But that’s not the only way to do it, but there’s another option…

The Executive Council

Not all Cabinet decisions go through Parliament to become law. Some have an easier, faster road. 

Sometimes legislation that is passed by Parliament provides a shortcut for future Cabinet or ministerial decisions to also become law (as subsidiary elements to that previous legislation). Parliament passed one of these recently. 

Hayward explains it better.

“[Cabinet] might also make decisions that can be implemented under the authority of statute, but that are regulations, or Orders in Council. Orders in Council are literally orders made by the governor general in Executive Council.”

To go back to the ye-olde metaphor from earlier, the Executive Council is the modern equivalent of the King’s ministers, who having agreed their plan in Cabinet, now put on their best wigs and front up to the Sovereign to ask for approval.

The members of the Executive Council are also the cabinet ministers, but now meeting the governor general as the sovereign’s advisors.

“When [the governor general] swears ministers in at the appointment ceremony they're appointed as ministers, and they take an oath as executive councillors. …and the Executive Council collectively advises the governor general.”

The Executive Council usually also meets on a Monday afternoon, after Cabinet. The governor general doesn’t come to the Cabinet room though, there is another, smaller room across the corridor just for this. It can be a smaller room because usually the attendance is also much smaller. 

“It'll always have at least two ministers, but often more ministers come to speak to their own items with the governor general. And she will ask questions and they will literally advise her around signing things through.”

The Clerk of the Executive Council is again present. And again is available to offer advice and to record the decisions made.

The 500 hats of Rachel Hayward

In Dr Seuss’s classic The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins a boy must doff his cap to a despot, but every time he does there is a bigger, fancier hat underneath. Hayward’s job seems a bit like that (without the doffing or tyranny). 

Every time Hayward describes one of her responsibilities there seems to be yet more jobs nested below. I have mentioned just a few: like organising and attending all cabinet and sub-cabinet meetings, recording all the decisions within them, managing the flow of paperwork from the many ministeries to Cabinet, advising Cabinet and the ministers, and advising the Governor General. Also doing the same secretariat work for the Executive Council. 

And you can add to that administering New Zealand’s honours system, keeping all the records of the Executive, administering the Cabinet manual (Cabinet’s rules), making sure no-one crosses constitutional bounds, managing New Zealand's relationship with Buckingham Palace including things like royal visits, facilitating messages that might come from the King. She’s also responsible for overseeing Government House (the governor general’s household).

And to top it all off… offering training to the ministers. 

“We have induction sessions for them… how to be a minister, the kinds of things they'll face, we get a senior minister in to talk to them about the reality of day-to-day, we'll get the Chief Ombudsman in to speak with them and the Privacy Commissioner, we do a session on conflicts of interest and those kinds of matters. It's a reasonably comprehensive program.”

It doesn’t always stick, but thank goodness someone is doing it.