Heather du Plessis-Allan: We’re overdue a good slashing of the public service

Oh, I love the cheek of the Public Servants union. Mainly because it gives me a chance to have a crack at public servants.

So, the PSA is upset at National.

Because National, and Act really, has promised to slash the number of back office bureaucrats if they win the next election. And obviously the PSA has got worried about it.

Because based on a couple of polls this week and the self-inflected shambles the Government’s been this week, it looks increasingly likely that National and Act will be in power and will be cutting public servants.  

So the PSA is trying to presumably drum up anger at this, and are trying to justify public servant roles by warning that removing back office roles will impact the front line.

“Backroom workers are critical to an efficient public service.” Not at the quantity they are currently. There are 2550 schools in New Zealand. There are 3900 full-time staffers at the Ministry of Education. That means there are 1.5 support people for every school in the country.

Come on, no school needs that.  And no school is getting that level of attention from the Ministry of Education. They are not getting 1.5 people available to them every work hour. 

And by the way, the Education Ministry wasn’t always this big. Under Labour, they’ve increased the staff by 50 percent.

They’ve tripled the staff at the Ministry for Pacific People. Doubled it at the Ministry for the Environment. Doubled it at the Ministry of Transport. Increased it by 68 percent at the Public Service Commission. Increased it by 66 percent at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Increased it by 62 percent at Statistics. Increased it by 50 percent at the Ministry for Women. And increased it by 38 percent at Land Information.

The test of whether we need as many people is this: has the service you received from any of these departments improved since 2017? No, it’s probably worse.

And by the way, while the staff at The Education Ministry went up by 50 percent, the number of teachers went up by 4 percent.

So yes, we’re overdue a good slashing of the public service. 

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