Private matters
Dr Rose Cole has a soft spot for Bernard Woolley. Fans of the political satires Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister will recall Bernard as the droll principal private secretary to Jim Hacker, the Minister for Administrative Affairs and later prime minister in the series.
Rose spent four years at the Beehive working as a private secretary for “ministers across the political spectrum”—for protocol’s sake, she prefers not to name names—and recently completed her PhD exploring how private secretaries navigate their role.
The job can be like walking a tightrope, she says.
You’re seen as being inside the cult of celebrity of a minister, but you’re expected to remain neutral and removed from any political goings-on.
Highwire act
For her thesis, Rose interviewed 15 former private secretaries who worked in Parliament during the period from 1997 to 2018.
A private secretary is a public servant plucked out of their usual role in a government department to act as the agency’s representative in the minister’s office.
They’re expected to provide support to the minister and be a conduit between the agency and the minister—all the time remaining staunchly non-partisan.
But there’s an ever-present risk of private secretaries being “overly responsive” to the politicians they serve and undertaking political tasks, Rose says. Her research found these tasks could include anything from being asked to snap publicity photos of a minister at an event to drafting letters defending government policy.
Private secretaries also have to manage the delivery of ‘free and frank advice’ to the minister in a highly politicised environment, Rose says.
More than one person Rose interviewed recalled fending off attempts by political advisers to change advice before it went to the minister.
In what could have been a line straight out of Yes Minister, one interviewee observed that advice would generally only be changed “if there is something that [is] probably factually wrong in it. And there can be quite a lot of robust discussion about that, of what a fact is.”
The job also comes with the day-to-day uncertainties of political life.
“One of the participants shared a story that, when a coalition government in the 1990s collapsed, all the private secretaries were sitting in the office waiting for instructions.
“The way they found out who was staying or who was being sent back to the department was when the phone guy came in and told them so-and-so’s extension was going to be moved to that minister’s office. It was a very abrupt end for a team that had worked closely together for two years.”
Despite the trials and tribulations, the 15 former private secretaries had no hesitation in recommending the job.
“Every single person, no matter how dramatic or horrifying some of those stories were of being treated well or badly, said that you should go for it. You’ll never have an experience like being a private secretary.”
“I couldn’t find anything to tell me how to do this job better.”
No manual
Rose says she picked her PhD topic because the contribution of private secretaries to the smooth running of ministerial offices had not been studied in detail in New Zealand before.
Nor was there a manual for newbies. “I couldn’t find anything to tell me how to do this job better.”
She describes the life of a private secretary as thrilling, all-consuming, and exhausting—a crazy careering path that TV series Yes Minister didn’t really reflect.
You’re also on the minister’s time schedule.
“If the minister is going to be picked up at six o'clock, you need to be ready at 5.30. And then you go and you wait. If the minister works till 10 pm, because the minister has a function and you are still on supporting it, then unless the minister says, ‘you go home’, you are there till the minister leaves and then you go.”
Ultimately, you need to be resilient to be in the role, she says.
Her thesis, completed at Ōrauariki—the Wellington School of Business and Government, is entitled ‘Navigating the ‘Purple Zone’—The Role of Private Secretaries in Ministers’ Offices in New Zealand’. The ‘purple zone’ is a minister’s office, where politics (represented by the colour blue) and administration (red) converge to change political will into administrative action.
Rose dedicated her thesis to those she worked with in the Beehive. She also pays homage to Bernard Woolley. “Bernard’s example of unwavering neutral propriety in the face of political and bureaucratic pressure provided me with great levity and salutary lessons. Thank you, Bernard.”
Rose now works as a programme manager at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.