... and equality for all
TEN years after the New Zealand government introduced an Equal Employment Opportunities policy designed to increase the participation of minorities in the public service, its success has been pretty limited.
The figures tell the story. While 4.6 per cent of New Zealanders aged 15-59 identify themselves as Pacific island people, for instance, they account for only 3.3 per cent of the country’s 36,100 public servants.
Nearly 10 per cent of the working population is Maori and a further 6.5 per cent identify as Maori and another ethnic group. But only 6.3 per cent of public servants are Maori with another 2.7 per cent part-Maori.
It is thus clear that the make-up of the public service does not reflect the New
Zealand population as a whole. More significantly, the majority of Maori and Pacific Island public servants work at the junior levels of the service few have risen to the middle or senior management ranks.
Whereas 20 per cent of all staff earn more than NZS4O,OOO a year, only six per cent of Pacific island men and two per cent of Pacific Island women are in this category. Maori men comprise only 12 per cent of this group and Maori women 4.5 per cent.
At the highest level, apart from the chief executive of the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, there are no Pacific island public servants earning more than 560,000. Only 0.7 per cent of Maori have made it to senior management positions.
A number of departments have been trying to increase minority participation for some years and have gone so far as to give priority to recruiting and developing Maori and Pacific island staff But this has clearly not worked in giving them adequate participation throughout all levels of the service.
Concerned about this, cabinet has directed chief executives of all government departments to implement strategies for increasing the numbers of Maori and Pacific island people at all levels.
The State Services Commission has been charged with promoting these strategies and to this end has produced two handbooks spelling out ways in which they may be
developed.
State Services Commissioner Don Hunn hopes this concerted effort will do for the minority races what the Equal Employment Opportunities policy has done for women, who now comprise 52 per cent of public servants. He acknowl edges they are still under-represented at the higher, better paid levels, holding only 18 per cent of senior management positions but points out that this is a big improvement on 1991 when they held only 10 per cent of the top jobs.
Hunn accepts that it will take some time to increase the numbers of Pacific island public servants to reflect their proportion of the population. As immigrants, they have simply not been here long enough to produce a generation
of university graduates with the qualifi cations an increasingly professional pub lic service requires, he says..
“The public service of the future will be highly qualified and skills of all kinds will be required if a newcomer is to make his or her way through the ranks.
Continuing education is the key and success will lie in Pacific island parents encouraging their young people to
become graduates.”
There is no proposal to use quota based affirmative action as the United States government did to boost the numbers of black Americans in the federal service hence no target numbers have been set.
The cabinet directive says govern ment departments should maintain the
principle of merit set out in the State Sector Act which requires all appointments to be made on the basis of the person “who is best suited” for the job.
“While we don’t have any targets, my personal hope is that within a decade we will have a public service that truly reflects the demography of the country,” Hunn says. “Only then will Pacific island people be satisfied that their concerns are truly understood.”
He acknowledges that it is no easy task. The total number of public servants has been halved in recent years. Hunn’s State Services Commission has cut its own staff from 750 to 130, severely restricting its ability to recruit.
In addition, high unemployment and hard times have meant people are hanging onto their jobs. There was a time when the turnover rate within the service was 10 per cent to 15 per cent it is now down to two per cent to three per cent, which makes it very difficult to get fundamental shifts in the personnel make-up of departments.
Hunn says the departments are now expected to go to considerably more effort than in the past to find suitable Maori and Pacific island candidates. If applicants for jobs are not suitable, at least they should be considered on a basis of their potential to become suitable, he says.
He rejects any suggestion that the departments are being encouraged to lower their standards. “It would be false liberalism if the effect of this was to dilute the ability of the public service to do its job. But we have to move to reflect the aspirations of the community. Otherwise we’ll get out of touch and then we wouldn’t be doing our job properly.”
The Careers Service, Quest Rapuara, is doing its bit to encourage more young Maori to get ahead, publishing a booklet about a group of Maori achievers in their 20s in all walks of life, designed to present them as role models for the
younger generations.
One, Charles Te Ahukaramu Royal, a 27-year-old writer, sums up their appeal to youngsters: “This is a new generation a new time for Maori to take control of their destiny as they go into the 21st Century, and be positive and creative about whatever they do.” □