When Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today that Judith Collins would become the next President of the Law Commission, he reached for familiar talking points about her “astute legal knowledge” and her service to the country. What he didn’t mention was far more significant: this marks the first time in the Law Commission’s 40-year history that a current serving politician has been appointed to lead this supposedly independent institution by their own government.
That distinction matters, because the Law Commission isn’t just another government agency: it exists precisely to provide non-partisan, independent advice on law reform. Set up under the Law Commission Act 1985, it’s designed to be a watchdog for our legal system, identifying flaws, consulting the public, and proposing fixes.
The appointment of Collins to this position also matters because it slots perfectly into a troubling pattern that has emerged under this National-led coalition: the steady colonisation of New Zealand’s public institutions by former (and now current) National Party politicians.
A Sinecure too far?
Collins isn’t just any politician stepping into a public role. She’s the Attorney-General (the Crown’s senior law officer) walking straight from Cabinet into a position that will pay her a comfortable salary to review and reform New Zealand’s laws. The timing is exquisite: she avoids a by-election in her Papakura seat by resigning in April, just months before the November general election. The optics couldn’t be worse.
This is political patronage dressed up as meritocracy. A sinecure in all but name. The Law Commission presidency may be prestigious, but let’s not pretend it carries the same intensity and pressure as holding seven Cabinet portfolios, running the Defence Force, and fronting crises like the HMNZS Manawanui sinking. For Collins, this looks suspiciously like a soft landing — a reward for loyalty, a graceful exit from frontline politics, and a nice earner to boot.
Compare this to how the role has been filled previously. When Geoffrey Palmer was appointed Law Commission President in 2005, he had been out of frontline politics for 15 years. He’d spent that time as an academic, a lawyer, and a constitutional law expert of international standing. Although he was appointed by a Labour government, it was not his own government. His reputation for non-partisanship was beyond question.
The previous President of the Law Commission, Amokura Kawharu, has never been in politics. She’s an academic and barrister who brought expertise in arbitration and property law. And the current interim president, Mark Hickford, is a public law specialist and former senior public servant, i.e. not a politician. This is the calibre and background the role typically demands: deep expertise, scholarly rigour, and most critically, distance from partisan politics.
Collins offers none of that distance. She was National Party leader just four years ago. She lost the 2020 election catastrophically, was rolled by her caucus a year later, then clawed her way back into Luxon’s Cabinet. As recently as last week, she was sitting around the Cabinet table making decisions about law and order, judicial appointments, and intelligence agencies. Come April, she’ll be heading an organisation tasked with independently reviewing those very same policy areas.
The Cronyism question
To understand why this appointment stinks, you need to look at the bigger picture. Collins isn’t being parachuted into a vacuum. She’s joining an honours board of National Party alumni who’ve been rewarded with plum appointments since this
Government took office.
The list is getting long. Bill English, the former Prime Minister. Steven Joyce, the former Finance Minister. Simon Bridges, the former Transport Minister and National leader, now chairing the New Zealand Transport Agency. Paula Bennett, the former Deputy Prime Minister who was still fundraising for National when she was appointed to chair Pharmac. David Bennett, appointed to the TAB board. Roger Sowry and Maurice Williamson have also been put onto various boards. The pattern is unmistakable and shameless.
I’ve written before about how these appointments corrode public trust. When Bennett was given the Pharmac role, the outcry was immediate — here was someone deeply embedded in partisan politics, who’d been raising corporate donations for National just months earlier, now overseeing the agency that decides which medicines Kiwis can access. The conflicts of interest were glaring. The Government’s defence? That she was “qualified” and that a Treasury team had overseen the process. But process doesn’t erase perception, and the perception here is rotten.
With Collins, the problem is even starker. The Law Commission doesn’t just advise on mundane regulatory tweaks. It tackles fundamental questions about our legal system: criminal justice reform, constitutional issues, Māori customary law, privacy protections. These are often politically charged topics where successive governments have competing visions. The Law Commission’s value lies in its ability to rise above those partisan battles and offer genuinely independent analysis.
How can Collins credibly claim that independence when she’s been in the thick of those battles for her entire adult life?
Independence under threat
Constitutional law academic Andrew Geddis put it well on Bluesky today: while a former politician (Geoffrey Palmer) has previously taken the Law Commission role, “no current politician has ever been given it (and by their own government).” That’s not an accident. It’s because appointing a sitting Cabinet minister — especially the Attorney-General — to lead an independent law reform body “carries a real risk of apparent-partisan bias in what has been a non-party-serving institution.”
Geddis did offer a caveat, noting that Collins has “done a pretty good job as AG in terms of calling out her own team when needed, so maybe she can act as this new hat requires of her”. That’s true. She’s taken her constitutional responsibilities seriously, warned ministers about respecting comity between branches of government, and spoken publicly about not politicising the judiciary. But competence as Attorney-General and suitability for the Law Commission presidency are different questions entirely.
The Attorney-General is a partisan role. It sits within Cabinet, serves the government of the day, and advances that government’s legal agenda. The Law Commission President, by contrast, must be visibly non-partisan. The institution’s credibility depends on it. When the Commission releases a report recommending major law reforms, the public needs to trust that those recommendations aren’t shaped by the political interests of the government that appointed the President.
Can anyone honestly say they’ll have that confidence when Collins — who until a few months ago was sitting in Cabinet meetings deciding government priorities — starts issuing Law Commission reports?
The Revolving Door spins faster
This Collins appointment also highlights a deeper democratic deficit in New Zealand: our complete lack of rules around the revolving door between politics and public appointments. Unlike most OECD countries, we have no mandatory stand-down periods. In Australia, former ministers must wait 18 months before lobbying or taking certain public roles. In Canada, it’s five years. In New Zealand? There’s nothing. Not even guidelines with teeth.
This matters because the revolving door creates inherent conflicts. Even if Collins genuinely believes she can operate independently, she carries with her all the relationships, obligations, and worldviews formed over 24 years as a National MP. She knows which reforms National wants pursued and which they’d prefer buried. She understands the political calculus behind law reform in a way no independent expert ever would. That knowledge doesn’t just evaporate because she’s changed jobs.
The solution isn’t complicated. As others have argued, New Zealand desperately needs an Independent Public Office Appointments Commission. Strip ministers of the power to appoint their mates to statutory positions. Create a transparent, merit-based process overseen by genuinely independent commissioners. Make political patronage harder, not easier.
Right now, ministers control a shocking array of appointments — boards, commissions, tribunals, crown entities — and they wield that power with minimal oversight. There is no independent oversight to ensure that the best, most neutral person is chosen for the job. Political patronage is all too alive and well (and not just under the current Government).
Does Collins even fit the role?
Let’s return to the central question: is Collins suited to be Law Commission President? On paper, she has legal qualifications. She’s been a commercial lawyer, held the ACC and Justice portfolios, and served as Attorney-General. But qualifications aren’t everything. The role requires someone who can command cross-party respect, who brings a reputation for scholarly impartiality, who can engage with Māori legal concepts and progressive legal reform without ideological baggage.
Collins’ record suggests she’ll struggle on all counts. This is, after all, the woman nicknamed “Crusher” for her hardline law and order policies. The Minister who championed punitive criminal justice measures. The politician forced to resign in 2014 over the Dirty Politics scandal, when leaked emails revealed her close relationship with rightwing blogger Cameron Slater and allegations she’d tried to undermine the head of the Serious Fraud Office. (She was later cleared of the most serious allegations, but the taint remained.)
More recently, Collins led National to one of its worst election defeats in 2020, running a campaign marked by negative attacks and policy announcements made on the fly. A year later, her own caucus rolled her after she tried to demote Simon Bridges in a late-night power play that backfired spectacularly. Her political career has been defined by controversy, confrontation, and combustible relationships with opponents.
None of that screams “trusted independent law reformer.” The reality is that Collins has spent the last two decades as one of the most polarising and partisan figures in New Zealand, with a specific, hard-edged approach to law and order and an unshakeable loyalty to the National Party. Yet historically, the role she is stepping into has required someone with a high degree of legal standing and, crucially, a reputation for being above the political fray.
Could this advantage the Government?
Here’s the uncomfortable question that needs asking: could having Collins at the Law Commission advantage this Government’s law reform agenda?
Think about what’s likely to come up over the next few years. Criminal justice reform. Treaty settlement processes. Resource management law. Privacy and surveillance powers. All areas where National and Act have strong, ideologically-driven views. All areas where the Law Commission’s recommendations could smooth the path for government legislation, or create political headaches by pointing in a different direction.
With Collins at the helm, which outcome seems more likely?
I’m not suggesting she’ll deliberately cook the books. But unconscious bias is real. When you’ve spent two decades fighting political battles from a centre-right perspective, when you’ve championed law-and-order policies and resisted progressive reforms, when your closest political relationships are with the people now in Cabinet, you can’t just switch that off. It colours everything: which issues you prioritise, which experts you consult, how you frame problems, what solutions seem reasonable.
The Law Commission has always enjoyed a reputation for fiercely guarding its independence. Previous presidents have pushed back when governments tried to influence their work or rush their timelines. They’ve produced reports that made governments uncomfortable. That’s the whole point: independent advice isn’t valuable if it just tells you what you want to hear.
Will Collins maintain that tradition? Or will her instinct be to soften recommendations that might embarrass her former colleagues, to prioritise projects that align with coalition priorities, to interpret evidence through a lens shaped by 24 years in the National Party?
We shouldn’t have to ask those questions. The whole point of appointing genuinely independent figures is to put them beyond doubt.
A Broader assault on independence
This isn’t just about one appointment, however problematic. It’s part of a pattern that should alarm anyone who cares about the integrity of our democratic institutions.
Over the past 15 months, we’ve watched this Government stack boards and commissions with political allies. We’ve seen public service neutrality tested as ministers exert greater control over agencies. We’ve witnessed the erosion of arm’s-length relationships that used to protect institutions from political interference.
The Law Commission was meant to be different. It was established precisely to provide systematic, independent law reform that transcends election cycles and partisan point-scoring. Its independence is enshrined in statute. Governments can refer projects to it, but they’re not supposed to control it.
By appointing a sitting Cabinet minister (their own Attorney-General, no less) to run it, this Government has sent a clear message: there are no sacred cows. No institution is truly independent if we want to colonise it. And if you’re loyal to National, there’s a comfortable job waiting when you’re ready to step back from frontline politics.
What Happens now?
Collins will take up the role in the middle of the year, prior to the election. If National is re-elected, she’ll be reviewing laws passed by the government she just served in, with ministers she sat alongside in Cabinet. If they lose, she’ll be reviewing Labour’s law, but with all the baggage of her partisan history. Neither scenario is ideal.
The Opposition should be making noise about this. They should demand that Collins recuse herself from any projects touching on areas she handled as a minister. They should push for clearer conflict-of-interest guidelines. Most importantly, they should commit to reforming the appointments process so this can’t happen again.
But they probably won’t, because both major parties benefit from the current system. Labour appointed Steve Maharey to chair Pharmac, after all. The revolving door spins both ways, and neither side wants to give up that power.
That’s why this matters. It’s not just about Judith Collins getting a cushy post-politics gig. It’s about a democratic system that increasingly looks like it runs on patronage rather than merit, where independence is performative rather than real, and where the public institutions that should check government power are instead being captured by it.
The Law Commission deserves better. And so do we.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project
Further Reading: