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.
7 comments:
If National was serious about cutting public servants they would have done so well before now. This is just electioneering. Obviously one of Nationals PR people has finally got through to Luxon about why National isn't as popular as he would like.
A carbon copy of her stablemate Ryan’s article. Are they getting talking notes from somewhere I wonder. Curious.
Readers will kindly bear with me as I repeat the comment I made under Ryan Bridges' article:
Many appointments to the public service are DEI appointments i.e. race- and/or sex-based rather than on the basis of competence.
When stranded in Turkey during the covid-19 saga we needed new NZ passports (we had been in Lebanon 17 years on Dutch passports and had forgotten to renew the NZ ones). I had dealings with numerous minions at the passport office in Wellington because for some reason someone different responds each time you get back to them with additional information or whatever. It was obvious to me that most of the characters I was dealing with were incompetent in the sense that they could only manage run-of-the-mill cases. I ended up more or less demanding that one person there who had struck me as being on top of things deal with our case.
Wanna reduce the size of the public service and increase efficiency and effectiveness at the same time? Simple: SACK THE INCOMPETENT D.E.I. POLITICAL APPOINTEES.
A carbon copy comment on a carbon copy article from someone with carbon copy opinions. There is a Nine Inch Nails song here, for anyone cultured out there to make the connection.
As usual the media and unions make it sound like it is all about cutting jobs when it should really be about driving efficiency and productivity. Surely if we focus on that then the outcome of reduced jobs is just that, an unfortunate outcome. Isn't this what the private sector tries to do, admittedly not always successfully.
Michael Laws on 'The Platform' released yesterday some stunning figures on our public service. The cost of each employee apparently works out at $175K each! Over 31,300 employees earn more than $100K pa, and some 2,200 employees earn more than $200K pa. And with our over 60,000 'public servants' who has noticed any improvement in our levels of service in recent years and what level of accountability do any of them take? Just look at the Charities oversight in the DIA, and what rorts John Tamihere and his Waipareira Trust have been able to get away with, and then you have Willie Jackson's involvement with the similar MUMA outfit, and then there's Te Kaika in the South Island. What's happening about any of them, and this is just the tip of a very large iceberg? And why do we need all the ministries we have, like Ministry for Women, for Pacific People, for the South Island etc.? They seem hellbent on inefficiency, incompetence, and waste, all at the taxpayer's expense. I'm all for the swamp being drained, for it's long overdue.
Swamp? Peter, the swamp-drainers you are cheerleading for have given tax cuts to tobacco companies. As Inigo Montoya says: “you keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means”
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