David Farrar: Why do the media cover staff cuts but not massive staff increases?

Newshub reports:

A union is slamming Government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40 percent as “brutal”, saying it’ll hit Pasifika communities hard.

The Public Service Association (PSA) said in a statement on Thursday that the ministry had told staff it was seeking voluntary redundancies.

The PSA said the ministry would cut 63 of 156 positions, of which 31 are vacant. It would look to redeploy and reassign staff.

So this would reduce the size of the ministry to 93 staff. Now in 2017 it had 37 FTE. So in just six years it had increased almost 400% and even after this reduction is 93 staff, that will still be 150% higher than in 2017. If current staff are not all FT, might be slightly less but still massively more than six years ago.

A good media report would include this information. It might even look at what better outcomes eventuated from increasing MPP staffing by 400% and whether this represented value for money. I won’t hold my breath.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.