Opinion: Richard Prebble.
We rarely lose a constitutional principle abruptly.
It is chipped away until one day, when it is too late, we realise it is gone.
A politically neutral public service that we can trust is one such principle.
On 9 September almost 10,000 public servants went on strike.
A coordinated public-service strike 47 days before voting begins is unprecedented.
The PSA has always been a political union. It says it campaigned against the National Government in 1999.
But this year it has gone much further.
It has registered as a third-party election promoter. Its campaign is called “Change the Government”. It has distributed election material in government workplaces.
Sir Brian Roche, the Public Service Commissioner, has said that its postcards are election advertising and that displaying them in public-service workplaces is inconsistent with political neutrality.
Where are our political leaders?
A neutral public service depends not only on the mandarins. It also depends on politicians defending the principle.
The government has condemned the strike as political.
Why has the Opposition not upheld the principle of a neutral public service and called on the PSA to abandon its political campaign?
And what about the strike?
Did the 10,000 strikers lose pay for the hours they were not working?
Or did we pay for the walkout?
Once I would have dismissed as paranoia the idea that the public service might deliberately sabotage a government’s re-election.
