MAF's Role
MAF is Government's arm in leading the protection and sustainable development of our biological resources for all New Zealanders.
Our role stretches across the whole lifecycle of New Zealand's resource-based production - from natural resource use, to production and processing, to trade (and travel) and its associated risks.
MAF is a sustainable development agency that delivers policy advice, regulation and service delivery on agriculture, forestry, biosecurity and food safety in New Zealand. Our vision is for New Zealanders to celebrate dynamic, scientifically sophisticated and prosperous agriculture, food, forestry and related industries leading growth and innovation in the economy, while achieving the economy, environment and society to which New Zealanders aspire. We have a significant, and influential, mandate.
To turn this vision into a reality, we need to focus on the end results of our work, measuring whether or not our activities contribute to the right outcomes. During 2006/07 MAF worked toward four outcomes around:
- encouraging a high-performing and innovative sector;
- developing safe and freer rules-based trade;
- ensuring healthy New Zealanders;
- protecting our natural resources.
MAF does not work in isolation - the agriculture, food, forestry and biosecurity-related sectors, as well as local and central government, are key to these outcomes. We have continued to work with a wide range of organisations this year and our work depends on this co-operation.
This was the last year the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) worked alongside MAF as a semi-autonomous body. From 1 July 2007, NZFSA will operate as a stand-alone government department. However, both organisations will continue to work together to ensure New Zealand's public health and safety and market access for our products.
Welcome to MAF's Annual Report 2006/07
I am pleased to present this report on the operations of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for the year ended June 2007 to the House of Representatives, pursuant to the Public Finance Act 1989.
This document summarises the Ministry's achievements over the past year and describes our performance in striving to reach our outcomes. We have continued to focus on becoming a strategy-led organisation - one whose work will make a positive difference for New Zealand. We believe we have made significant progress this year. MAF's mission of enhancing New Zealand's natural advantage has been increasingly embodied in our agriculture, forestry, biosecurity and (until the end of the year) food safety programmes.
Please take some time to explore this report and learn about the work MAF has done and the difference it has made for New Zealanders.
Murray Sherwin
Director-General
Director-General's Overview
We've said before that MAF is a very busy Ministry, engaging on major issues on many different fronts. We've put enormous effort into raising the significance of the primary industries and biosecurity with government as well as lifting our own ability to be present and influential where these issues are being discussed. This drive reflects our mantra of “putting MAF back at the top tables” and I think we have made real progress on that front. More importantly, our surveys indicate our stakeholders have also seen a lift in our visibility and impact.
We've been working on some of New Zealand's critical issues: economic transformation, climate change, biosecurity, water allocation and quality, sustainable land use, international trade and market access, walking access, animal welfare, GMO's, organics, sector development and, until the end of this year, food safety (through NZFSA). We also run a large, efficient and successful forestry operation, often in partnership with Māori land owners. MAF covers the full range of policy advisory functions, regulation, risk management and service delivery. It's one of New Zealand's core public sector agencies, and one that describes itself as a sustainable development agency.
Leading Biosecurity
Over half of all MAF's staff work to protect New Zealand from pests and diseases - it's our biggest line of work. The visibility and the public and political interest in our management of biosecurity have grown. Over the past few years, MAF has focused on delivering on New Zealand's Biosecurity Strategy. We have been charged with leadership of the overall system, and with delivering across the full range of biosecurity outcomes - protecting New Zealand's environment, health and lifestyles, and economy. Doing this effectively requires taking an integrated approach to biosecurity - and making sure the system as a whole (pre-border, at the border, and post border) is working together to reduce risk. Building a framework to meet MAF's leadership role in biosecurity continues to be a huge job. However, we've substantially upgraded our capacity to fulfil our role - in strategy, policy, regulation, surveillance, response, service delivery and communications/stakeholder relations. The volume and scope of the work we've delivered is substantially advanced compared to our capacity five years ago.
Not everyone will be happy with our work - as must be expected. The best operational capacity in the world can't always provide an answer for new incursions. This is particularly true in the aquatic environments where we simply lack the tools for responding to arrivals such as didymo and styella. In those situations, we initially worked on public awareness to reduce the pests' spread as well as investing in science to find the tools we need. Perhaps our biggest challenge in biosecurity is judging when not to respond. Biosecurity could use every available dollar and still present opportunities to spend more because we can never completely eliminate risk. Making good decisions about where to concentrate our effort and resources is at the core of an effective biosecurity system.
Building an Integrated Biosecurity Service
This year MAF decided to fully integrate all our biosecurity work into our new biosecurity-wide group - MAF Biosecurity New Zealand. Starting 1 July 2007, this will allow us to better use our front-line quarantine officers' understanding of risks so we can produce standards which are effective, targeted and practical at the border and have the most impact for the available resources. Our 'Capability Programme' aims to substantially reshape our border work by focusing on our quarantine staff and systems. This programme will address staff remuneration, new training, long overdue investment in systems, stronger management and enhanced career pathways for our senior and longer serving officers. We've been working with the Public Service Association on this important work and expect it will support both parties as we move into a wider programme to establish a refreshed Partnership for Quality framework.
Collaborating Across Agencies
Working across agencies has become a strong theme in MAF's work over the past few years. We are currently working with other border agencies (including Customs and the Immigration Service of the Department of Labour) to streamline New Zealand's border services. We've already been working on a number of initiatives including sharing some staff and accommodation and developing “one stop shops” where customers can have all border clearances processed at a single point. Our objective is to meet the information needs of multiple agencies engaged in clearing passengers and goods at the border. We will continue to focus on increasingly linking systems across agencies as new border systems develop.
In other areas of MAF's work, we're now closely allied with other agencies in developing strategies and policies, especially in the area of sustainable resource use. Our staff have closely engaged with, and were sometimes located alongside, colleagues from other departments as they conducted analysis, and developed and consulted on policies. This occurred in the Government's climate change programme, the water programme of action, the food and beverage taskforce, and many international trade issues (including the WTO Doha round, FTAs and bilateral technical barriers to trade).
Stakeholder Relationships
MAF has engaged with local government, the private sector and non-government groups to make sure our work is as appropriate and effective as possible. Our linkages with local government, in particular the various regional authorities, are increasingly important to our work in biosecurity and sustainable land management. Local government has made it clear that they want further development on this front. We have also stepped-up our engagement with private sector entities and non-government groups. MAF sees developing and sustaining effective relationships with our stakeholders as one of our core competencies and something we must constantly work on. Our senior leadership aims to increase our effort on external relationship management and to assess MAF through our stakeholders' eyes. This helps us improve our own performance by better understanding how it feels for stakeholders to engage with MAF. For this reason, we have been experimenting with formal relationship management programmes with a few key stakeholders as a part of how we measure our organisation's performance.
Industry Development
The sustainable development of our core primary industries is an area where MAF can have maximum influence on New Zealand's future. The land-based primary industries remain at the centre of who New Zealand is, and at the heart of our ability to pursue the Government's goals for the country - as a high skilled, high income, innovative nation that treats its people fairly, provides opportunity for all in education, health, and retirement, has a proud and distinctive place in the international community and is an example of environmental quality. MAF, and the work we do, is at the centre of those aspirations. We're working with our primary industries to ensure that the practices involved in the production, processing and distribution of our primary products can also have a distinctive and profitable place in world markets by drawing on the qualities listed above.
New Zealand is a producer of high quality natural protein and fibre. These products have many attributes, but none more significant than the abundance of clean water used in their production. In a world that is increasingly short of both protein and water, New Zealand's primary industries have become even more important. The context of their natural resource use is the focus of MAF's framework for Sustainable Development of New Zealand's Agriculture and Forestry. This framework sets out a broad concept of sustainability and discusses New Zealand's position, threats and opportunities.
New Zealand Food Safety Authority
In late May 2007, Cabinet decided to separate the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) from MAF and establish it as a new department. Over the past five years, NZFSA has operated as a semi-autonomous body (SAB) attached to MAF. This meant the legislative powers and authorities associated with food safety regulation were assigned to me as the Director-General of MAF but were delegated to the Executive Director of NZFSA. By doing this, both MAF and NZFSA developed strongly over the past five years as high performing agencies. However, the SAB structure was heavily compromised and did not fit well with the requirements of the State Sector and the Public Finance Acts.
The work MAF, NZFSA and SSC staff put in to the separation after the decision in May will enable the separation to occur on 1 July 2007 and is a real tribute to all those involved. While the separation tidies up the awkward governance arrangements, the importance of close and collegial working relationships between MAF and NZFSA will remain. In many areas, each group contributes substantially to the other's outputs especially in international trade and export certification and verification. We will also continue to engage through a shared services arrangement whereby NZFSA will continue to share in MAF's services such as payroll, finance, and IT/IM. We look forward to this ongoing close working relationship with our NZFSA friends and colleagues.
Performance Measurement
A serious challenge for MAF has been to develop effective measures of our performance in achieving outcomes, but we have made significant progress. Our Statement of Intent has steadily evolved and improved over the past four years but, in common with many, it has been very limited in setting measures of outcome success. We have been working on developing outcome performance measures over the year and will publish this work in August 2007. It will take time to see trends in some of these measures and others may become less indicative of performance than we currently think. This means that our narrative around the raw data will be important. Ensuring it is insightful, honest and compelling will be as challenging as producing the numbers themselves!
Organisational Development
MAF has experienced the benefits of developing our own capability on many fronts. Over the past few years we have made major investments in MAF's infrastructure, with upgrades in finance, information management, HR, assurance and risk management, strategy and ministerial servicing. MAF is becoming a much more capable organisation with greater capacity to carry out our work for New Zealand. The past year was hugely demanding with reshaping the biosecurity system on top of the NZFSA separation. The fact that we managed them both effectively while still delivering a large base-load of business-as-usual work, reflects our gains from developing our infrastructure. One notable initiative was establishing an external Assurance and Risk Committee consisting of professional directors Bill Falconer and Rick Bettle as well as Peter Hughes (CEO of the Ministry of Social Development). We've been privileged by the group's willingness to serve on our committee and have already gained greatly from their insights and advice.
We've had real success in attracting high quality candidates to positions at MAF, partly through our ability to deliver a challenging, learning and satisfying work environment. To help monitor our performance in this area, we began an annual employee engagement survey which revealed how well we connected with our staff and where we need to improve. We're committed to maintaining and developing this process each year, as long as it helps MAF work more effectively.
Finally, I'd like to again pay tribute to the MAF team. Each year, the demands on us expand and the complexity of our tasks increases. Each year, our staff respond. I have often said that MAF has one of the great mandates in New Zealand's public service - and I see a group of people enthusiastic about that mandate and demonstrating it with commitment, energy, real integrity and huge collegiality.
M A Sherwin
Director-General
Contact for Enquiries
Strategy and Performance Group
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526, Wellington
Tel: +64 4 894 0100
Fax: +64 4 894 0738
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