Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Let's make a start on unwinding years of public sector bloat

As you’d expect, I’m a huge fan of Nicola Willis’ plan to cut down the size of the public sector.

This is the second issue I’ve been harping on about to her. The other one was, obviously, the fees-free year for university students. So I’m stoked that, on this show, we’re two from two in terms of agitating for cutting back on wasteful public spending.

The public service in this country is too big. There are 63,000 public servants. There were only around 47,000 when Jacinda and Grant started throwing money around. We have 39 Government departments and ministries. Ireland has 18. Australia has 16. We have 39.

We have Government departments like the Ministry for Women that don’t appear to do anything other than write reports and make work for themselves.

Now, anyone arguing against cutting back public servants - and there are some people doing this - needs to explain why. And if the answer is, “Oh, because it’s someone’s job,” well, that is not an answer.

Because if it’s a job we don’t need, but we keep it just to keep someone in work, then that’s just really expensive welfare, isn’t it?

But as much as I love this proposal, I am worried. I just can’t shake the feeling that this coalition may not follow through on this promise because this is the second time they’ve made it.

Before the last election, ACT was saying they were going to cut 14,000 public servants. Have they cut 14,000 public servants? No, they haven’t. They haven’t done it.

And it feels like this announcement has been dreamt up at the weekend because there’s no actual plan - just an announcement. And that announcement is that the public service is going to be asked to design its own downsizing. So it feels a bit on the fly.

Also, it’s a week before the Budget, which makes you wonder if this has been announced so Treasury can take 9000 public servants out of the Government’s payroll when doing the Budget forecasts for next week - thereby putting the books in better shape and maybe bringing the surplus forward a little.

Do you see what I’m doing here? Maybe this is all just designed to look better than it actually will be. Once bitten, twice shy.

But it’s a hell of a big risk for National to commit to something like this publicly and then not deliver. So I’ve got my fingers crossed. This could just be the start of unwinding years of public sector bloat.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.