Board Games: Who sits on the nation’s public sector boards?

Saturday, 12 October 2024

New Zealand’s sprawling public sector board scene is made up of more than 500 directorships, replete with professional board directors, ex-public servants, ex politicians and businesspeople, according to new analysis by The Post.

In a newly released series: Board Games: Who’s Winning at Public Sector Monopoly? The Post has published a full list (accurate at the time of compilation) of every person who sits on every public sector board - with the exception of higher education and Boards of Trustees.

But just what are all these boards?

The New Zealand Government makes up 32% of the economy. In addition to the various ministries and departments which are very well known, there are also a phalanx of lesser-known government agencies, commissions, Crown entities, companies and little quangos.

These organisations do not govern themselves - they have (mostly) government-appointed boards that run them.

They range from big publicly listed companies such as Air New Zealand, where the Government owns more than half of the shares, to state-owned entities, Crown entities, autonomous standards bodies and much besides.

This is part of the sprawling - but often unseen and little known - public sector board community. Many of the names will be known to New Zealanders. Many more will not be.

While all boards have the basic responsibilities of directors, public boards that also operate commercial activities are paid better because they compete with private companies for board talent.

An in-depth analysis by The Post found that 526 people sit on two or more boards and that, of course, there are plenty of ex-politicians who sit on many of these boards.

Board Games - which will run in The Post over the coming few days - will delve into who sits on these boards, what they were paid in fees last year as well as examining how many political appointees are involved.

We have also published a long, searchable, list of every person who sits on a public board, using publicly available data. This was up to date at the time of compilation and best efforts have been made to verify it.

When compiling a list such as this there are inevitably decisions around what to put on and what to leave out. In this instance we chose not to include all of New Zealand’s education institutions such as universities, Wananga and polytechnics (as well, of course, as the thousand of Boards of Trustees that govern schools around the country).

One question was around commissions such as the Commerce Commission, Human Rights Commission and so on. Commissioners effectively operate as an executive board, so the fees represented in their list are actually salaries. This is noted on the master list.

Overall, these boards are an important part of the architecture of New Zealand’s public service. They are more particularly well paid compared to private sector boards, although members are paid for their time.

They are, however, important, and the people who sit in them deserve scrutiny, praise and criticism when appropriate.

We will be running stories on the list over the coming days on different aspects of the list and what we found.

More than anything, however, this is a one-stop-shop to find out who sits on what board for anyone interested or who needs the information.

We hope you enjoy Board Games.