Public Sector Reform: Random thoughts on Singapore, cities, and the state

10/09/2025

Singapore keeps popping up in our public sector reform debates like a mirage: sleek, disciplined, coherent, the city-state that somehow cracked the code. The comparison is false. We are not Singapore and never could be: our constitutional DNA, our politics, our whakapapa of contested legitimacy make sure of that. Yet the question lingers, because in two places, Tāmaki Makaurau and Ōtautahi, the lessons of Singapore’s city-state logic might apply, and might hold the key to lifting the country with them.

I’m a bit embarrassed to say I never got my submission in on the Public Service Amendment Bill. So rather than give evidence to the Select Committee, I’m going to write it up here. One of the things that keeps coming up in conversation with colleagues and friends about the amendments is a comparison between Aotearoa and Singapore. The question is always: why can’t we be more like them?

In today’s post, I want to address that question. I want to sketch why we, as a nation, are not like Singapore, and why we never could be. But I also want to point out why a couple of our cities might be able to borrow from the Singaporean model. Over the next couple of days, I’ll return with my actual submission on the Amendment Bill. As usual, they’ll be a little controversial and probably quite different from what others are saying.

Singapore is the wrong comparison for Aotearoa, but it is still an important one. People keep reaching for it as if we could borrow its playbook wholesale. We can’t. Our constitutional DNA is too different. However, there are lessons worth holding on to, and they become most evident when considering our two main cities.

Three points matter. First, Singapore built an administrative class that is deliberately elite. The best of the best are recruited, trained, and invested in. They are treated as the state’s backbone. That investment provides clarity and coherence: policy advice and delivery connect because administrators know their job is to carry out the state’s medium and long-term objectives, not just to service ministers. By contrast, Aotearoa, as I have been arguing on this platform, has hollowed out that layer. We have institutionally separated policy from delivery. We have mostly hollowed out the core. We cycle generalists through jobs. We have mostly forgotten the art and craft of delivery, and we spend a lot of time wondering why things drift.

Second, Singapore had Lee Kuan Yew. One leader, half a century of anchoring authority, and an orderly succession plan through his party. That stability gave its institutions room to mature. Aotearoa does not have that. We had glimpses of it with Muldoon. But suffice it to say, Muldoon was no LKY. Also, MMP disperses power, coalitions shift, Te Tiriti embeds a whakapapa of contested legitimacy, and local and regional government amplify that. Leadership here is fragile by design.

Third, Singapore’s political class knows how to use the state. Politicians there are trained, disciplined, and oriented towards making the machinery of government work for long-term goals. That is paired with a style of governance that is absolutely clear: focus on people, focus on delivery, focus on learning. In Aotearoa, we have not invested in a political class: we leave that to parties, who serve the interests of their members and donors. It is one of the reasons our politics is short-term and tactical, without the depth or skill to work the public sector machine.

Where does this leave us? Singapore is a thriving city-state, and that scale matters. Coherence there is survival. Drift would be fatal. That is why its lessons are best applied not to Aotearoa as a whole, but to the two cities that most resemble that city-state logic: Tāmaki Makaurau and Ōtautahi.

The first is our only global city, carrying the weight of diversity, population growth, and infrastructure demand. The second is Ōtautahi, the capital of Te Waipounamu: the South Island’s anchor city, scarred by disaster, yes, but defined by the energy and resilience of its response. If anywhere in Aotearoa needs coherence at the level of a city-state, it is these two.

If we take the Singapore lesson seriously, then the city deals for Tāmaki Makaurau and Ōtautahi need to reflect that very model. These cities should not be treated as just another set of local authorities jostling for scraps, but as strategic anchors for the nation. That could mean delegating them functions and powers from the centre: the ability to plan long-term for the central government functions within their boundaries, align central government infrastructure investment with community needs, attract the offshore capability to govern at scale, and hold entire appropriations. If they are allowed to grow local coherence, they will not only carry themselves but also lift the rest of the country with them.

That is why the Public Service Amendment Bill matters. I missed the deadline to make a formal submission, so I am setting out my argument here instead. Over the next couple of days, I’ll post my complete response to the Bill: as usual, it will be a little controversial and probably quite different from what others are saying.

This is where the reform literature comes back in. Public sector reform has consistently centred on the idea of coherence, whether through the 1980s managerial turn, the 2000s networked governance and performance frameworks, or today’s debates about system leadership and right-sizing the state.

The Singapore example reminds us that coherence is not built by slogans or structural tinkering. It is built by investing in administrators, stabilising institutions, training a political class that can work the machine, and getting on with the work of delivery and learning how to make delivery better. Those are the lessons worth carrying forward. I have taken this idea forward into my submission on the amendments to the Public Services Act: it builds on some excellent thinking by Eric Crampton and Khyaati Acharya, offered in In the Zone: A Toolbox for Regional Prosperity, together with the kōrerorero from the Iwi Chairs Forum held at Tuahiwi Marae on 22 October 2024 and Derek Gill and Norman Gemmell’s (2025) work on the myth of the shrinking state.

References

Crampton, E., & Acharya, K. (2015). In the Zone: Creating a Toolbox for Regional Prosperity. New Zealand Initiative.

Gemmell, N., & Gill, D. (2016). The myth of the shrinking state? What does the data show about the size of the state in New Zealand, 1900-2015. Policy Quarterly, 12(3).