> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # One Job Ad - URL: https://goodoil.news/one-job-ad/ - Published: 2026-09-27T23:00:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-27T23:00:06.000Z - Description: One Seek listing will not decide an election. It should decide whether you believe a word they say. - Author: Reproduced with permission - Tags: NZ Politics, Culture Wars [**Rodney Hide**](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-one-job-ad?ref=goodoil.news) *Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.* The Department of Conservation is hiring a principal iwi strategy and partnerships advisor. Wellington. Permanent. $110,033 to $145,000. The ad does not whisper: it shouts. Lead strategic initiatives that strengthen Treaty partnerships. Embed te Tiriti o Waitangi principles across DOC. Drive meaningful organisational change. Coach others to strengthen organisational capability. Provide expert Treaty guidance so te Tiriti and settlement commitments are “appropriately considered” in every decision. There is even a new “DOC Treaty Operating Model”. Parliament has risen for the election. The government that promised to end co-governance has had nearly three years. ACT put Treaty principles on the ballot paper of politics and lost the vote in the House. National talked about ending race-based preference and vague partnership doctrine. NZ First thundered against co-governance. And DOC is still advertising a senior officer whose job is to deepen the very project voters voted to end. That is not a recruitment hiccup, but a confession. Either the bureaucracy is a law unto itself, hiring for a worldview ministers claim to have shut down, or the politicians are telling the public one story and the departments another. You cannot have it both ways. If the principles of the Treaty are so unclear that parliament had to debate a bill to define them, how does a department “embed” them across the organisation? Embed what? Partnership? Co-governance with softer branding? The courts’ invention? The officials’ preferred reading? The ad assumes the answer is settled. The election assumed it was not. Settlements are law. They must be honoured. At least until they are undone. But that is not what this job is selling. It is selling a permanent principal whose mission is to strengthen partnerships, embed principles, and change the culture of a Crown agency from the inside – while the government campaigns as if that agenda is on the way out. Watch the language. “Treaty partners.” “Stewardship of strategically significant Treaty partner relationships.” “Organisational capability.” It is the vocabulary of a parallel constitution administered by people who never face the voters. Ministers can repeal a clause here and soften a statute there. The job ads keep coming. The salary band fills. The operating model arrives. The next cohort of officials is hired to make yesterday’s politics tomorrow’s default. Three years is long enough to change a department’s hiring brief. If you cannot change that, you have not changed the government. You have only changed the press release. So which is it? Are the bureaucrats freelancing, building Treaty partnership machinery the cabinet dare not defend on the stump? Or are the politicians playing us: talking tough about co-governance and principles while the departments are told, quietly, to push ahead? One Seek listing will not decide an election. It should decide whether you believe a word they say. This article was originally published by [Brash and Mitchell](https://www.brashandmitchell.com/post/rodney-hide-one-job-ad?ref=goodoil.news).