Ryan Bridge: A clean up of Cabinet is overdue

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · May 18, 2026 · 2m · transcript

In February last year I wrote a piece for the Herald about government department and ministerial overload.

It was partly informed by observation and partly by New Zealand Initiative paper on the subject.

Luxon's Government has 81 portfolios, significantly more than similar-sized countries and far more than most larger ones.

Ireland, Norway, Singapore, and Finland all have fewer than 20. The UK, Canada, United States, and Korea have fewer than 30.

Australia’s population is five times larger than ours, but even they have almost half the number of portfolios.

The number has shot up under MMP…