About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


53 Cal L. Rev. 1155 (1965)
The Ombudsman in New Zealand

handle is hein.journals/calr53 and id is 1183 raw text is: The Ombudsman in New Zealandt Walter Gellhorn* CC'1AT-E THE GOVERNMENT in early 1961 circulated a proposal to V Vtransplant the ombudsman from Scandinavia to Wellington, a top-ranking New Zealand official recently recalled, my Department was strongly against the whole idea. We regarded it as just a political ma- neuver and, as a matter of fact, we may have been right at the time. But now, after nearly three years of experience, we are just as strongly in favor as then we were opposed. The Ombudsman has proved to be a good thing for the citizen-and for the Department, too. 'OMBUDSMAN' BILL SHEER HUMBUG, proclaimed a banner headline in the official organ of the New Zealand Public Service Asso- ciation, whose 48,000 members in governmental posts make it the largest employee organization in New Zealand. The proposal, the Public Service Journal continued in September 1962, is half baked. It panders to sec- tional prejudices-those directed against officialdom. If it works at all, it will cause confusion and disgruntlement.... It is the public servant, and only he, who is to be harassed and hounded as part of the policy of halting the welfare state in its tracks .... The Commissioner will be a party creature-an apologist for the Government while in office and the spy of the appointing party when in opposition.' Three years later the same periodical exulted, in its most prominent news columns, that the Ombudsman's annual report had once again exonerated the Public Service from any charge of malpractice and had found fault with relatively few decisions. In one respect, the Journal added, the Ombudsman has proved to be an even better friend of the Service than these figures suggest. He has laid down precedents for investigating some of the administrative acts of the State Services Commission regarding individual public servants-and has issued some sharp rebukes to the Commis- sion.... It is becoming increasingly clear that the office of Ombudsman is not necessarily the trap for public servants which many of us feared when it was first established. Indeed, the present incumbent is making it probable that public servants will make more and more use of the office for settlement of otherwise unappealable grievances.2 A close analyst of the proposal to create a Parliamentary Commis- sioner for Investigations told the legal profession in 1962 that the office t Copyright 1965 by Walter Gellhorn. The substance of this article will appear in a volume to be published by the Harvard University Press in 1966. * Betts Professor of Law, Columbia University, New York City. 149 Pub. Serv. J. no. 9, p. 2, cols. 1, 2, 3 (1962). 2 52 Pub. Serv. J. no. 6, p. 1, cols. 1, 2, 3 (1965). 1155