Draft Relationship Agreement with Government feels hollow
Posted on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 | Posted in Government Relationships | 10 Comments »The Steering Group Kia Tutahi Standing Together, appointed by Minister Turia to develop a relationship agreement between Government and the sector, is running a series of hui around the country in July and August. This week we attended one for national organisations and it was very lively discussion! We want to share the issues we raised at this meeting for our members to consider, and hopefully you can use as a basis for you to participate in other hui around the country and send us your comments.
Content of the draft Agreement
The draft Relationship Agreement is very high level – as promised – but it’s actually less strong and less clear than the previous Statement of Government Intentions for an Improved Community-Government Relationship (the SOGI). We would like a document that spells out the respective roles and responsibilities of parties, and has considerably more substance than this draft.
Parties to the agreement
It is proposed that Communities of Aotearoa , rather than Tangata Whenua, Community & Voluntary sector is the community party to this Agreement. We certainly recognise that our sector is not the community, but have been seeking a relationship agreement between our sector and Government and feel this definition is a re-statement of the social contract between people and Government. It does not advance the cause of a strong well-connected and informed sector.
Implementation
Without other documentation to spell out how the relationship will work, it feels like a hollow effort. We’re aware of various other important supporting developments – such as the Code of Funding Practice, Reference Guide about Consultation, Cabinet Guidelines on Consultation - which are all in different stages of development. These need to be brought together as part of the presentation of the Relationship Agreement, so it has some substance.
We think monitoring and review is essential and must be included with the base document. There is the need for an annual review process to be clearly spelt out, and an appeal process through an Ombudsman was stressed by many people at the forum.
Tell us what you think!
We would be very interested to hear from you about your ideas an impressions from other hui! The quickest and easiest way to do this is to submit your comment in the space provided below.
Read other views posted on our website
See the timetable for the hui nearest to you and read the draft Agreement
I totally agree with your comments.
I am disappointed.
What is meant by the term ‘Communities of New Zealand’? This is NOT the Tangata Whenua, Community and Voluntary sector; the ‘Third Sector; etc that were envisaged in an agreement. Such community organisations are invisibilised and marginalised by the draft agreement. In their place is a nebulous concept ‘Communities of New Zealand’ In fact it feels a bit like a return to the neo-liberal maginalisation of community and voluntary sector agencies as self-interested contractors seeking to stand in for ‘legitimate’ and romantacised notion of ‘community.’
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
I am concerned that tangata whenua is subsumed in the term community. Tangata whenua or Maori participation is a different basis to general community hence the need to maintain this position. Maori have been advocating for years, decades even, to have their unique relationship with the Crown recognised.
I feel the agreement lacks substance. It avoids plain speaking, and it asks mainly for an attitudinal position – which can’t be measured. People could contravene this agreement hourly and still protest that they’re keeping to it.
I feel it needs to be preceded by a straightforward analysis of the environment in which it will apply and of the issues that it’s attempting to overcome. Further, the statements need to be worded tightly enough to actually define people’s behaviour.
For example:
– What is the reason to ensure we respect each other’s different responsibilities? If we identify this, then we can write the words that will make it so. However, a slave owner could ‘respect the different roles and responsibilities’ of his slaves without changing his behaviour at all!
– What is ‘effective’ communication? Between whom? What does ‘effective’ look like? What communication problems have we had in the past? Only if we define this, can we create remedies through this agreement.
- We need to define the purpose of sharing information before we can commit to making it ‘relevant’. Relevance can’t be measured otherwise.
- We can ‘respond’ to another’s ‘guidance’ politely, and then simply ignore it. Whatever is meant here needs to be more plainly stated.
- We can ‘take account of’ the people whose daily lives are affected by our work simply by writing their names on a list, or briefly contemplating them in our thoughts. ‘Ensure our policies and practices clearly reflect our primary accountability to the residents and communities whose daily lives we affect’ would be stronger.
- Even the strongest-looking statement – ‘We will work to enable communities to determine their own destinies for the betterment of all’, but it could be made stronger by removing the words ‘work to’, which only ties us to being part of a process, not to getting any results. Work how often, or how much?
- ‘For the betterment of all’? All of whom? What if helping a community determine its destiny means closing down the chemical factory? Does that mean we can’t do this?
- Similarly, ‘we will increase opportunities for people to participate and flourish’ really puts the onus on nobody to do anything. Which people? Participate in what? How many opportunities? Who will measure whether people are flourishing?
Whilst we don’t expect this agreement to be abused, certainly the wording of this agreement provides every leeway for abuse, or even ignoring it completely. There is no mention of monitoring, or of how to ensure fairness, or compliance, or of dealing with any outcomes of noncompliance.
My feeling is that the agreement needs to be set in a context of history before its relevance can be gauged. The agreement exists in an historical context; there is a purpose to be achieved by it, and historical patterns that need to be reshaped by it. The agreement needs to say what these are, and why they need reshaping.
I feel it requires redrafting in a stronger form, and to be given much more teeth.
I attended the hui at Porirua on 21 July. There was a good turn out of local people, probably aided I suspect by the Steering group member who presented being from that area and well known in the community. A short presentation of the relationship agreement was given and then we were broken into six groups of about 15 people to discuss some question prompts and provide feedback.
The discussion was constructive, but it was clear that many people present had not heard about the document before they came and didn’t know what it was meant to be all about, and even fewer had any awareness of the history of the development of the Community Government relationship, what the original 2001 document was meant to do, or the work that has been going on in the sector over the past 9 years to develop it and give it more traction.
Key themes that came out of collective hui feedback were:
- The relationship of the draft agreement to Te Tiriti o Waitangi has not been properly addressed or articulated to make clear what it means, and this needs more work.
- The agreement and its implications requires a lot more visibility and awareness raising around it so that communities and government agencies alike know about it, understand what it means, and know how they can use it.
- It is not at all clear how it will be implemented, in what ways it will make government accountable to communities, and what the agreement will do to make the relationship better in practice. Obviously a document at this high level would not achieve this, but there doesn’t appear to be any implementation or accountability mechanisms planned to give it “teeth”. There was a lot of cynicism about whether such a document would make government any more accountable to communities in practice.
- On the positive side, many people were encouraged and excited by the concept of improved relationship and a statement of commitment to do so, and thought that was worthwhile as a first step.
Comment: While it is clear from this gathering that many participants didn’t really know what they were coming to, and how meaningful the whole agreement exercise was going to be in practice, it’s equally fair to say there is a similar lack of knowledge or perception of relevance about what national umbrella organisations have been doing around the Statement of Good Intentions etc. None of this is really surprising given the diversity of networks and interests these processes are trying to reach. But in the end, whatever the process, the words of any agreement, or who signs up to it, its credibility long term will be whether there is any positive difference as a result.
In the interface between communities and government, much of that is of course around funding and contracting, which many community organisations are wholly or partly dependent on. It is also around information sharing and consultation around government policy changes that impact communities, and whether communities get timely, relevant information about matters that affect them and/or they have an interest in, and crucially, how much influence they have over decisions and outcomes. It’s also about how much support communities have from government to proactively suggest changes and improvements to things, and have those suggestions listened to and taken on board seriously.
A common theme for individuals and communities in their relationship with the government sector is government’s structural siloing and inability to work cross agency and within agency. It’s hard to imagine how any agreement between government and community can get very far without the government partner breaking down its own structural barriers set up through Vote funding, ministerial portfolio responsibilities, chief executive departmental line accountabilities and the little fiefdoms within large government bureaucracies. The term “whole of government” approach is used for many policies, and this one would be no exception, but the label doesn’t make it work in practice.
In conclusion, I think one of the several elements of a successful community government relationship would be one where government better responds to, and organises its priorities around communities of interest, rather than forcing communities to fit into the boundaries it sets. Regionalisation of many government services is of course an attempt to do just that, but the perennial problem of cross department differences eg in the geographical areas they cover makes them exhausting and frustrating to deal with from a sector point of view.
I find myself wondering time and time again who, if anyone, has the big picture map of the Tangata Whenua, Community and Voluntary Sector in Aotearoa and how it all fits together. OCVS would seem the obvious candidate to have that overview but that awareness is not apparent to me.
I guess what I’m left with is a sense that Kia Tutahi, for all its goodwill, may in practice change little apart from enabling those who are involved in it directly to feel good about themselves.
I agree completely with Katherine Noble, and I also was at the Porirua meeting.
I would like to add the issue of the members of the reference group and their lack of mandate. One of NZCOSS Board members, Owen Lloyd was chosen to be on the reference group and he has made it clear to our Board that Minister Turia chose people as individuals with their own viewpoints, not as representatives of any organisation.
I understand her reasoning is that she wants fresh viewpoints and fresh faces. The problem with this is that history is lost, and the work of many before is not acknowledged.
Additional comment and discussion is also appearing online at http://bangthetable.com/kiatutahi – so please share your thoughts here or there so that all feedback can be considered by the Kia Tutahi Steering Group.
With Te Tiriti o Waitangi being a foundation or guiding agreement, it wil be a fundamental requirement that all Groups receiving Govt funding be contractually required to have an MOU, or hapu/iwi mandate (depending on local Hapu, Iwi requirement).
This will include a mutual development plan, that emphasises hapu development away from handouts, “helping” agencies etc. See UN Rapporteur initial report: “Extreme social and economic disadvantage faced by Maori…, These troubling conditions undoubtedly result from the historical and ongoing denial of the human rights of Maori, which must continue to be addressed as a matter of upmost priority.”
All contracts must be reported back under these criteria by provider and Maori “partner”… This assumes the provider is not tangata whenua. By Tangata Whenua is meant Hunga kainga, hunga whenua pre and post Treaty.
This will foster connection with the whenua, history, tangata whenua, as well as Unity and mutual development of all people.
I agree with Katherine Noble. It was helpful to hear about the attendees at the hui in Porirua who came without a history of the SOGI or the work that has been done before and since. This is a good prompt to make sure people who intend coming to the Hamilton hui next week get a copy of the SOGI as well as the current draft agreement and are alerted to the comments above particularly from Susanne Vincent. That might also help with the problem Ros identified of history lost. Thanks
I feel a great sadness in reading these responses to the Draft Relationship Agreement. Because they are highlighting the failure of efforts made by community organisations and tangata whenua over the past 40 years (and beyond) to create a working relationship with Government.
Of course we want to work together, of course we need a partnership to ensure the services we provide may continue. And this is not just about funding a service, or which service will get the funding.
The other part of the equation is Policy, and while my organisation might have the best possible set of policies and plans for programme implementation, based on research of our sector – it won’t matter a damn if we do not fall in line with Government Policy. That’s RealPolitik, right?
So I do not see the clauses of the Draft Agreement doing anything to promote community well-being, to enhance the efforts made by the large and the small organisations in New Zealand, the iwi and hapu organisations. Which is what we know best, which could really help government in making good policy decisions.
What I find most disappointing is when I can put my name under what I am bold enough to write, while the Government hides behind its Kia tutahi Steering Group, and the media- managed encouragement from Grant Aldridge.
Hi there. Katherine, I’m responding to your query about “the big picture map of the tangata whenua, community and voluntary sector”. In terms of OCVS collaborative work on defining and describing the sector, I note there are a number of publications from the Study of the NZ Non-Profit Sector at http://www.ocvs.govt.nz/work-programme/building-knowledge/study-of-the-non-profit-sector/index.html.
But, as noted by many, the Kia Tutahi Steering Group has gone for a wider notion of “communities”. This, by coincidence, echoes the approach of the 2009 OCVS-led Building Better Government Engagement project which focused on government engagement with citizens and communities. That project’s report emphasised the interdependent roles of central government, local government, tangata whenua organisations, community and voluntary organisations, and businesses in all contributing to societal outcomes. And citizens and families are portrayed as being at the centre – see diagram re this in the final BBGE report( http://www.ocvs.govt.nz/documents/work-pragramme/bbge/msd-from-talk-to-action-report-to-print.pdf).
Many of us who have been around awhile probably initially expected the relationship agreement to be government and the community and voluntary sector. My impression is, however, that a lot of the regional meetings do actually like this wider focus on communities. Its certainly food for thought. Clearly, which ever way it goes in the end, the community and voluntary sector’s concerns and issues must be central.