The pathway to good decisions is good policy analysis
It wasn’t the farming, truck driving, labouring, or the 18 years as a union official that led the Honourable Rick Barker to complete his Master of Public Policy (MPP) at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
As a member of parliament, Rick was part of New Zealand’s largest policy shop and far less qualified on policy matters than he should have been. But the main factor was his children.
Rick had been to university earlier in his life, studying everything from psychology to geology, but he left his studies to work on the land.
“If you can name it, I’ve done it,” says Rick. “But when my kids got older and smarter, they asked about my time at university.
“Well talk to us about your university career Rick? How did you go finishing that?” they said.
“So, I knew then that I should go and finish the thing that I had started. I had to show my kids that even after all these years you can still finish something.”
Rick says he lacked formal knowledge of policy analysis—how to manage information, structure it, and work with it. And so, hearing that several other MPs had completed the programme, he signed up for the MPP in 2008.
He pursued his studies during a very transient time of his life, juggling a full-time job and studying two papers a trimester, in addition to taking on responsibility for his young nephew.
“Being a member of parliament, I had a 70-to-80-hour work week. The House was sitting until 10 o’clock at night and as the Assistant Speaker at the time, I had to be on duty pretty consistently.”
After 10 pm he would then pull out his papers and study until the cleaners came through with their noisy vacuum cleaners at midnight.
Although Rick says that this time was a battle, the degree challenged him to approach issues differently and changed the way he thought about policy and decision-making.
“It was structured and pushed me in directions I hadn't been in before, but more importantly, it made me think clearer about the issues in front of me.
“I found that my writing initially was pretty poor. Markers found that I was a bit rambly and slightly discursive, so they marked me down on that.
“But I learnt how to write more clearly and logically, and it's been of great service to me.”
That knowledge became invaluable when he was elected to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council in 2013, where he eventually became Chair.
“When I started, the Chair relied on me in analysing what was the right way forward. What were the big issues, and what were the things to take into account?
“I found the skills that I had gained during the programme invaluable,” says Rick.
For Rick, the importance of the MPP stems further than his own experience. He believes public policy expertise plays an important role in strengthening good decision-making across local and central government.
"One of our biggest failures is that the value of public policy is underappreciated,” he says.
“Many people think that they are a policy analyst expert and that they know about policy—usually from their own personal perspective, as opposed to a dispassionate, critical analysis of the facts and the context around the issues to be analysed.
“The pathway to good decisions is good policy analysis.”
The lessons Rick took away from the MPP have become anecdotes, teachings, and stories shared throughout his life, professionally and personally.
“There's a lot of other things I learned on the course which I've used over and over again to help me with certain situations and discussions.
“The MPP made me a better member of parliament, and a better informed, better educated, and more useful person.”