Ryan Bridge: The public service cuts didn't come out of nowhere

We got the inevitable Grinch headlines from the media yesterday, powered by union panic.

The public service knew this was coming. Or should have. Judith Collins, Nicola Willis and Sir Brian Roche have been talking about this since they all got into office.

So it's not shocking.

It's also not a done deal, yet.

All that's really happened, in the final leg of this government's current term, is a few letters have been posted to some chief executives.

They've been asked to mood-board some cuts to staffing.

The savings will be banked, but there's no guarantee any of this will actually happen.

Winston Peters was right about that yesterday.

That's for the election to decide.

Back to the unions and opposition complaints.

Two basic questions.

If these proposed cuts are so bad, so evil, so destructive, so armageddon, why was a workforce equivalent to about 1% of the population allowed under Helen Clark?

Was she an evil Grinch, too?

And how can you say the public will suffer, the sky will fall in, the clouds will gather, when you know not what jobs are actually being cut yet?

How are you to know there aren't reasonable back-office savings to be made?

We're told the money will instead go towards the frontline in health and education.

To be fair, the same argument could be tipped on its head. Without knowing what's being cut, how can the government claim no services will be impacted?

The proof of that pudding will be in the eating but remember the job of figuring out which jobs to axe, without affecting us, the taxpayers, is in the hands of the very people whose jobs are on the line in the first place.

If we are to trust them, as the unions and opposition clearly do, should we not trust they'll know how to be surgical and only trim the fat and not the bone?

Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.