"Wellington's consultancy-industrial complex is in a funk." Good.

"[Wellington's] consultancy-industrial complex [is] in a funk, because philosophically and culturally, the change in government has shown up the gulf between them and the government. It has also demonstrated two major issues: The dearth of strategic and intellectual grunt in much of the public sector; and the ideological chasm between many of the ... public servants [sic], and the Government ...
    "[Ten years ago] there was a significant cohort of senior and leadership talent in parts of the public service [sic] that were formidable in their intellectual capability, commitment to ideological neutrality, and interest in an evidence-based approached to public policy.... [along with] a deep understanding of what they did and did not know, and what they could not know. ... They all knew that, by and large, they had no idea how much of the economy worked in any detail. ...
    "The beginning of change in that culture happened under the Clark Government, which was much more pro-active and wanted to 'do more.' ... the Ardern/Hipkins Government put it into overdrive, and the Luxon Government will be seeing the signs of it. ...
    "The elections of [Tory Whanu as mayor], Tamatha Paul as MP of Wellington Central and Julie Anne Genter as MP for Rongotai provides a sign of what has happened to the Wellington public service [sic] over that time. ... The Wellington public service [sic] grew enormously in the past six years, drawing upon enthusiastic graduates, predominantly coming with ... left-wing enthusiasm for state intervention, regulation, spending and taxation, with suspicion around ... the views of significant portions of the public, including those of more senior civil servants, because of identity factors (e.g. race, sex, gender &c.) ...
    "None of that would matter one iota if they could put that to one side and be highly-competent public-policy analysts, but that competence is wanting ... lacking historical knowledge and being weak on analytical capability.
    "As a result the mood today in many government departments ... is one of fear and depression, as a workforce of relatively young public servants [sic], most of whom did not vote for this government, struggle to cope with being asked to implement policies they don’t agree with. ...
    "[T]here is significant scope to scale down the numbers of people doing policy in government in Wellington ... because there is a distinct lack of talented, capable and clever people, who put aside their personal political biases in favour of evidence-based policy advice. Most importantly, there are few who will admit to Ministers 'we don’t really know how to do that' or 'we don’t know how that part of the economy works' or 'we don’t have the knowledge or experience on that issue ... '
    "[T]he government appears willing to lean down on the state sector (albeit not enough), which should provide ample opportunities to send blinkered ideologues with mediocre intellectual grunt to a new life not serving a government they hate."

~ Liberty Scott, from his post 'Wellington is in a funk'