Has the New Zealand Treasury become more about 'the feels' then the economy? One economist believes that is the case. 
The Treasury has come under intense scrutiny over the last month, after Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf claimed that leaked information National had been promoting about the 2019 Budget had been hacked. 
This statement was later proven to be inaccurate, with the GCSB allegedly warning Makhlouf against making such a statement. 
It has raised questions about the state of the Government agency, but economist Eric Crampton believes that it has been suffering for years.
He told The Weekend Collective that Treasury has hampered their own ability to succeed by not hiring more analysts than economists. Crampton says external stakeholder surveys over the last four years has shown a decline in trust.
"We've also seen it in their hiring patterns. The kinds of students who normally would be coming from economics into the summer internship programme, they stopped seeing Treasury as being the place that cared about economics."
Crampton did research into their hiring patterns, which showed that Treasury had emphasised everything except for economics in their hiring processes, looking for lawyers and accountants, that those with economic expertise felt on the out. 
He says this is a problem as Treasury is meant to be a level, economic ruler across all the different government ministries, and provide financial advice to those departments. 
"That's a lot harder to do if you don't have economists on the job and you hire people with other skills instead."