JAMES JOHNSON

• Led advice to Cabinet on a package of operational and legislative actions to strengthen New Zealand’s response to recent increases in offending by children and young people
• Changes approved and a Youth Crime Taskforce was established to deliver actions
• Led advice to Ministers of Children, Justice, and Police on detailed legislative design and policy decisions needed to amend the Oranga Tamariki Act to strengthen the Family Court’s ability to address offending behaviour in children.
• Lead the development and drafting of a Remand Action Plan to improve remand settings and outcomes for young people.
• Led advice to the Ministers of Children and Police to expand and fund the ‘Fast Track’ programme, a new multi-agency approach to working with children with offending behaviour. Programme expanding to eight new regions.

• Managed team that drafted, consulted on, and launched the Forestry and Wood Processing Industry Transformation Plan (ITP), including getting Cabinet approval
• The ITP was the first plan in two decades that set out an agreed vision, priorities, and actions to transform and grow the forestry and wood processing sector
• Secured $27 million in Budget 2022 to support the delivery of the ITP actions
• Stood up a work programme and investment processes to invest funding and secure co-funding
• As, for the first 4 months of the role), I led the drafting of the ITP, advice to ministers, and ITP programme management
• Established a partnership group with industry, unions, and Māori to support ITP implementation and worked closely with Māori Treaty partners, including seconding Māori partners into my team, and running a series of hui with Treaty partners.

• As part of New Zealand’s whole-of-government response to COVID-19, I established a new policy team with eight staff to lead advice on how to manage the demand for, and supply of, managed isolation and quarantine facilities in New Zealand and international arrivals
• The team secured ministerial agreement to introduce, and improve over time, a range of new policy initiatives to support the management of arrivals into New Zealand
• This included establishing:

- A new automatic online booking and allocation system for international arrivals to secure space in managed isolation (MIAS);

- An application-based Emergency Allocation process for compassionate travel to NZ;

- A new mechanism to allocate MIQ space to critical worker; and

- A ministerial decision-making process for determining other priority travellers, such as for priority events

• Worked closely with a range of ministers and senior government officials to design and improve the allocation system over time
• Managed the team in a very fast-paced and challenging environment.

• Led a cross-MPI team of up to eight to amend the forestry components of the Emissions Trading Reform Amendment Act
• This included providing policy advice on critical issues, managing complex stakeholders, and managing and producing material for the Select Committee and wider parliamentary process
• Led verbal discussions with ministers and stakeholders on the Bill
• The Bill changed how forestry was managed and rewarded in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS); it introduced ‘averaging accounting’, established a new permanent forestry category in the NZ ETS, and a range of other operational improvements.

• Led a team of four responsible for policy and vote management advice for Te Puni Kōkiri, Ministry for Pacific Peoples, and Ministry for Women
• Co-led development of the cross-agency $500m Lifting Māori and Pacific Peoples Outcomes budget package in Budget 2019
• Led Treasury engagement and advice to ministers on the Parihaka reconciliation process
• Gained agreement from the Minister of Finance and the Parihaka community for a $10m Funding Agreement, which had been ‘stalled’ for 5 years
• This was the largest ever per capita reconciliation payment to a Māori group
• Led Treasury advice on various Crown-Māori kaupapa including whenua Māori reform and Whānau Ora, and state sector reform.

• Secured $36m for a world-leading fund that uses administrative data to target funding to ECE services with children from disadvantaged backgrounds (this replaced the ‘decile system’ in ECE, which used census data)
• Gained ministerial agreement for funding and policy design decisions for the new fund
• Established and chaired cross-Ministry team that led implementation
• Introduced accountability measures for the fund, including reporting requirements and spending guidelines and restrictions
• Led sector consultation on fund design & roll out.

• Led budget bid, and secured funding, for the first nation-wide investigation of orphaned petroleum wells in NZ
• Led small team to delivery investigation and overall policy response
• Led advice on offshore decommissioning of petroleum fields, including legislative provisions
• Provided advice on Government’s science strategy
• Developed consultation approach and drafted the summary of submissions
• Developed communication plan, led focus group discussions, and undertook data analysis for a review of the Health Research Council.