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Saturday, October 19, 2024

David Farrar: We still have more public servants than a year ago


The media and the left have reported on the reductions in public service numbers as some form of brutal year zero policy which would have you think the Government has turned the clock back decades.

The reality is that we have 421 more (FTE) public servants than a year ago. Yes the reduction in the first six months of 2024, is less than the increase inn the last six months of 2023 under Labour.

Basically they went up 4% in the last six months of Labour and dropped 3.3% in the first six months of National. Where were all the stories about why public sector agencies were massively increasing their staff numbers during the caretaker period before an election?

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear me, are you suggesting that senior bureaucrats are working in their own interests, not the public’s? Perish the thought.

Peter said...

Well, given the stats provided by the erudite Oliver Hartwich in a recent post of his (13 October), it's something like over a fifth of that last year's increase can be put down to additional staff employed at our Reserve Bank, and most of them being (it seems) newly appointed communications staff - aka, 'spin doctors'. I'd suggest this being precisely why, despite the very massive increase in public servants in recent years (many of those under that 'communications-trained' former PM), we have seen no measurable improvement in actual service deliveries - in fact almost the exact opposite. When they're not employing staff the other thing these well paid, accountability averse, bods are apt to do is employ consultants. Hopefully, if nothing else, that latter rort has been reined in?

Anonymous said...

It's not about the number of public servants, it's about having enough people to buy flat whites to keep "hospo" going. Priorities for the government.