Who’s Your Boss: MPI’s Ray Smith

Saturday, 17 May 2025

With upheaval in the public service and a new minister demanding accountability, The Post is asking every public service leader for a 10-minute interview. Anna Whyte talks leadership, stress and future challenges with Ministry for Primary director-general Ray Smith.

Everyone in the public service knows Ray Smith. Or has worked for Ray Smith. He embodies the public service, through and through.

His catalogue on The Post photo archive looks like a running visual history of shoots with ministers past - 2004 Social Development Minister Steve Maharey, 2011 Associate Corrections Minister Sir Pita Sharples, 2013 Police Minister Anne Tolley, 2015 Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga, 2016 deputy PM Sir Bill English, 2018 Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

A Wellingtonian of 30 years, a public servant for 43.

His office boasts views over the back of Parliament, all the way down to the Bolton Street cemetery.

Smith knows the answer to every weird location question that’s thrown at him.

A piece of artwork created in prison of a previous Rugby World Cup still hangs behind his desk now, brought with him from his days as Corrections Minister back in 2012.

Born in Pukekohe, Smith moved to Hāwera in south Taranaki at age 10. He spent his school holidays on his older brother’s dairy farm, up in the Waikato.

“My father, in his earlier days, was a stock and station agent for the Auckland meat council. His father, my grandfather was a farmer as well.”

He wanted to be a professional tennis player. He wasn’t bad, representing his province. But when that didn’t work out, Smith moved up to Auckland at 17 to work at the Department of Social Welfare.

“I worked in the New Zealand superannuation division, in those days, you used to qualify for superannuation when you were 60.

“I used to get the New Zealand Herald and go through the death notices and I used to look for the people that were over 60 that had passed away. I'd cut out their little clipping and go and find their record and close off their file and write to their their next of kin.”

Until he was 30, Smith lived and worked all around South Auckland.

“I met a lot of people whose life course is much more difficult than mine. I visited well over 1000 homes… I love that work in the social welfare side… Ministry of Social Development nowadays.

“It taught me a lot about people and about their aspirations and the difficulties and struggles they have, and how to provide good service to people often that don't have a lot of choices.

“I think that really gave me a strong sense of public service.“

He went from Work and Income to Child, Youth and Family (now Oranga Tamariki), spent eight years as chief executive at the Department of Corrections, and has been at the Ministry for Primary Industries for more than six years.

“When I came to Wellington, obviously it became more of a bigger leadership opportunity to try and help change and shape systems that people work in.

“I've been very fortunate that public service has given me a massive amount of opportunities across different departments, and taken me to lots of places and met all sorts of interesting people.

“But I've never forgotten what it's like to be a person right at the base of an organisation that didn't have any power or any particular authority, but had to learn their way into a job.”

His advice to public servants: “Stick with it, and do your best every day, and every opportunity you get, take it, because that's what I did.

“I had no idea that I could ever end up [as director-general of MPI]. It wasn't any part of any plan I had to be a chief executive of the government agency. But, the opportunities came my way, and I took all of them, and they benefited me in the long run.

“If I can do it as a person that left school at 17 and just got a job without a qualification, then I think anyone can do it.”

There have been a lot of ups and down in the 43 years Smith has spent in the public service.

“There's always different economic cycles, and this has been a tougher one, but it's not the first tough one I've been through.”

Leaders Smith has looked up to include George Hickton, who he described as an inspirational leader.

“In the late 80s, early 90s, where there was a lot of public sector restructuring, he came from the private sector to run the income support division in the Department of Social Welfare.”

Smith described him as a liberating person who brought new ideas.

“He wasn't wedded to the public service system as such.

“Dame Margaret Bazley [former director-general of the Department of Social Welfare] … She was an amazing chief executive. I got to spend some time with her and learnt a lot from her. She knew how the system worked and how to work the system really well.”

Asked about his own approach to leadership, Smith said he considered himself to have “always been a chief executive that's got a plan”.

He also tries to be visible and available.

“Half the time I'm here [in the office], this sometimes feels a bit like a doctor's surgery. There's an endless stream of people coming in, and I try to make myself as available as I can.”

Stress has come in different forms during his time in the public service.

At MPI, it’s economically focused.

“The total export value of the things that fall under our auspices are around about $57 billion a year. And we won't build hospitals and schools and roads and things, unless we're getting those export earnings into the country.”

Smith also spoke about the difficulties of having to “go and tell somebody that, whether it's a poultry farm or a dairy farm or someone that's in the horticulture industry, that actually we have to destroy or take away their livelihood for a while, while we fix that biosecurity risk”.

“We had a lot with mycoplasma bovis, big cattle disease outbreak where seemingly healthy animals had to be culled,” he said.

“This job has a different sort of set of responsibilities … whereas my background had been very much in the social welfare and the care side of things people that were struggling with disadvantaged children.”

In the beginning working on child welfare - “when … small children that can't defend themselves and can't run away and can't tell someone …

“That's difficult.

“The staff that work there do an amazing job, looking after young people that are often come from very damaging environments.”