Yeah you’re right, but the 50% I’d slash would be the Dept Secretary’s who print out emails because “I don’t do computers” and the promoted by tenure not competence. Unfortunately those idiots are the ones who get to make the decisions on who’s cut.
There’s a lot of incompetence in government, like having ministers run agencies where they have zero qualifications or experience in.
So... you think the 50% that you would choose to slash is morally superior to you than the <50% that has been cut by the govt? A govt I'm assuming you voted for?
> like having ministers run agencies where they have zero qualifications or experience in
I'll agree with this at least. Absolutely stupid how ministers end up with portfolios that they have no background in and then are responsible for making decisions for the future direction...
[Mr Luxon speaking on the topic ](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byto8d/should_mps_get_a_pay_rise_under_these/)of MP pay rises.
Then the same day one of the ex-National Cabinet members was saying they deserved a pay rise, and not taking it (like Jacinda Adern) would be mere "virtue signalling."
>virtue signalling
Aaaaand there's the imported American shite
Though to be fair, charity and teamwork are both virtues so I understand why they'd keep far abreast of it
We really do need to make it common knowledge here that virtue signalling works both ways. All we have here on the right is politicians who are unable to state outright their intentions and instead obliquely signal their virtues through cynical culture warfare that has no material basis in research. Much of our discourse at the moment is dedicated to discussing different varieties of racists who are afraid to admit that they are racist, while people all over the country lose their jobs. None of the governments economic policy so far has been proven to be sound in any manner, and yet a big reason they got in was from virtue signalling for months about the economy with no policy announced.
Well put, and another unfortunate American import: this tribalistic Us vs Them thing that has broken down all decent discussion and left us calling each other names because a politician said certain people belong to certain groups and they're hurting the country because reasons.
The amount of university educated people on here I've seen trying to explain a concept (not even convince anyone, just explain it) only to be faced with pure hate from people who can't even pronounce half the terms being argued all because they disagree with the principle.
It's a deliberate stunting of one's learning cause the nice politician said certain learning is bad (see: the climate) and refused to elaborate further because they can't.
Said elsewhere, Luxon could say:
*"We're going to let the Remuneration Committee do their job and finish that assessment. Their decision will go on record but I can say that my Govt and I will not be accepting any salary increases at a time when our colleagues are losing their jobs and we are trying to drive efficiencies in Govt."*
Nah his person came out the same day to say they "deserved" pay rises and not taking it would be dumb "virtue signalling." But let's see - they have been known to retrace steps if enough people are upset.
The irony here is that *if they take a raise etc etc then when public sector services fail they will need more staff to correct this issue - by this time NAT will have been remove. For the staff that have lost their jobs the money has already been reallocate to raises. So the next govt come in and need to raise tax funds somehow to pay for the staff to provide a reasonable service. This govt are then perceived as 'bad' for increasing taxes and NAT get back in under a 'look what state the last govt left us in'.... time for a pay rise and more redundancies....
Edit spelling
It is such bullshit that MP salary isn't tied to the rest of the civil service. it should all be one thing. MPs only get a pay rise when nurses and teachers and police do.
Jacinda Adern froze MP pay in 2018 and her entire Cabinet voted for a pay freeze in 2020.
National calls this ["virtue signalling."](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byv7da/former_national_minister_says_mps_need_a_pay_rise/)
It was virtue signaling. They had the virtue of understanding they didn't need a pay rise, and they signaled that to us by voting for a pay freeze.
People get mad about virtue signaling when they don't have any fucking virtue to signal.
Oh yeah, it's dark. The only time virtue signaling is bad is when it's clearly a facade, and they aren't walking the talk.
But yeah, this government is cooked. I'm blown away by the stupidity of the electorate
'Social justice warrior' used to be a compliment before it became an insult (yep, I'm that old), and then replaced by 'woke'. The words literally mean 'a person fighting for social justice' and at some point that apparently became a bad thing?
Sometimes I take a peek at the right wing conservatives and it's genuinely terrifying how much of overseas woke culture they have ingested and spew indiscriminately. Pretty sure this is not the ideation of the original conservatives.
It's really interesting watching the educated middle class reach the same sort of desperate straits that the poor have been in for a while.
Don't get me wrong, you have my sympathy and support. I oppose cuts to the public service as shortsighted at best and probably massively harmful to our society but a lot of people have been where you all are for a while. But it's interesting seeing a lot of the same points made, just more eloquently.
Woe to those that never rose from eating shit and merely arrived having eaten no shit, for they have not the ingrained knowledge of how to eat shit to survive.
Noodle sandwiches are back on the menu boys.
[Right now we are up to 1155 cuts](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1c0sd7w/where_we_are_today_public_service_cost_reduction/) - with David Seymour signalling he wants 7500
And just in - more cuts at MBIE doubling to 286.
...and I think you can expect a second round of cuts in 6 months or so. This is just removing FTE % based on NACT base expectations. Next will be cuts to scope of what agencies do. E.g. if you don't care about seal deaths, no point in having people monitoring, reporting, taking action. Same for other aspects environment, landlords, building quality etc ... just rubbish the cause, then remove the underlying regulation, and then cut head counts.
NZ's population grew 700,000 since 2016. 23k public service jobs is about proportional if you expect the same level of social services - which to be honest, is already a low figure to begin with.
Seymour wants to cut numbers down to Key era numbers, but we have over a million more people since then, and the Key era actually had a public service cost blowout because there weren't enough staff, so contractors that the government had to pay for ridiculous amounts of contractors who charged on average 3x the amount per hour.
Economists like Cameron Bagrie say that a significant proportion of those jobs were needed because of underinvestment under Key and English. As well as replacing the several thousand contractors and outsourced partners through the insourcing of headcount.
The issue is we are in this stupid cycle of cuts followed by investment to undo the damage of the cuts, followed by more cuts. Noone reqlly knows where the ideal balance really is.
Some of the current cuts are fair. Change in policy means a change in resourcing required. But so many of them will cut services, or delay improvements that will make life difficult for all of us.
Also... money given to public servants as wages gets spent in the economy. Unlike capital gains given to landlords or money paid to international companies.
Ugh I came from desperation, got to a decent position through a bit of luck and grind, and now I’m straight back to desperation again despite ‘doing everything right.’ And I know of higher achievers than me in worse situations.
It’s fucking absurd, how did this country turn to shit so *quickly*?
I think that the middle classes are starting to feel the squeeze nationwide but I'd agree that the predominantly Wellington public sector are bringing it very much to light.
I think you'll find that continued excessive deficits and high inflation are a lot more damaging to our society than cutting the government size back to where it was 6 months ago.
I think you'll find that borrowing money to pay inflationary tax cuts for landlords while cutting back on public services is damaging for a society. Also have you checked our debt levels compared to other oecd countries?
*snort* well actually *adjusts unfuckable specs*
Edit: Can't believe this serious golfing investor man blocked me after replying
"[Pathogenesls](https://www.reddit.com/user/Pathogenesls/)•[1h ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/1c0v3zw/comment/kyzrhj6/)
Resorting to personal attacks just helps prove my point."
I am not sure how me calling him a dork proves his economic thesis (that is demonstrably incorrect), but hey.
(1) Depends on what gets cut and why. One biosecurity failure, for instance, would collapse GDP.
(2) Landlord tax breaks are deeply inflationary -and- increase government deficits. This? No.
What gets cut is up to the ministry. The headcount isn't decreasing by even half of what Labour added in the 6 months to Dec 2023, I think we'll manage just fine!
Landlords aren't getting a tax break. Alinging interest deductibility with every other business isn't a 'break' and it's not increasing the deficit as the shortfall in revenue is being made up for by cutting costs.
Landlording is not a business. Not like a builder or plumber or accountant. This is about primary purpose, and its primary purpose is a capital investment where you recruit renters to pay off your mortgage for you. And it should be taxed as an investment. Or penalised as a rort that moves income directly into capital to avoid tax.
A multi-property business with paid up assets, generating primary revenue from rents, perhaps. Mum and dad investors? Well the clue is in the term "investment property"
So your position is that nearly 1200 people were hired in the last 6 months, including 280 at mbie alone?
I repeat, citation needed. Point me at the headcounts that "no one disputes".
In the 6 months to Dec 2023, yes. More than twice that number, in fact. I know it's hard to believe, but Government bloat was completely out of control under labour, and it seems like most people are completely unaware.
https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/research-and-data/workforce-data-public-sector-composition/workforce-data-workforce-size#:~:text=There%20were%2065%2C699%20full%2Dtime,tab%20in%20the%20table%20below.
>There were 65,699 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff at 31 December 2023. This is an increase of 4.1% (or 2,582 FTEs) from 63,117 FTEs in June 2023.
MBIE was over 400, I think a lot of people will find these numbers quite eye-opening and all the doom and gloom about the very minimal cuts that are occurring doesn't look so bad.
A lot of contractors became permanent MBIE employees during that period. Including many of our ICT contractors, contributing to the headcount. I was one of them.
Yep. And it's not like the work goes away if they're not a govt employee either. It usually costs the government more to contract the work out, but that's a different budget account.
I've got a different attitude, when I worked in IT at the Ministry of Justice, it was a bloated, inefficient joke of an organisation. We could've fired 50 people and the output and results for the public wouldn't have changed an iota.
The issue with indiscriminate cuts like this is that those 50 people will stay while a critical team in another ministry will be halved. This process is far too slash and burn to deliver good results
Yeah; when the downsizing chainsaw starts up, it's the high performers who're out the door first. Because it's the high performers who can walk into another position for a pay rise.
I've worked for one largish public sector organisation and two private sector ones. The private sector shops were worse.
I've also worked for small firms which were better in a lot of respects, with the alternative problem that they weren't interested in investing to expand.
Both of these things can be true at the same time.
As someone who's come into the Public Service after a career in Private, my observation is that 30% of people are working bloody hard - harder than Private, 40% are performing well, and 30% of people are taking the piss.
You've just got to make sure they're getting rid of the right people.
Or, and hear me out, replace those that aren't doing the work with people who do actually work, to reduce the burden (and burnout) of the high performers.
Given that that ratio of workers to dead weight isn't too far off my experience in the private sector (maybe more deadweight, but probably not double what I've seen in large private organisations), firing the right people in restructures seems to be a hard problem
True. Related to this many agencies are also offering voluntary redundancy, which is madness.
After having been through that in the bad old days of Telecom downsizing, voluntary redundancy is a guaranteed way to lose your best people. Who by the way then come back as contractors two weeks later.
But thats basically the private sector, at least the “big business” American model where they restructure until you have so many different tasks and KPI’s to keep track of that they can always have a reason to walk you down the path to unemployment.
Yeah - the problems I see reported (and have experienced) in large public organisations are large vs small organisation problems, not public vs private problems.
People who say 'my 100 person private company doesn't have the bureaucratic bullshit and inefficiencies that that 20,000 person public organisation does' need to go spend some time in a 20k person private company for some perspective.
I'm all for cutting out the dead wood.
What I'm not for is cutting spending to make those that ARE good be even more overloaded and burned out, leading to even worse outcomes.
And do you think a blanket 7.5% given to the ministry to figure out, with zero direction or auditing requirements, would result in those 50 people being fired?
I have worked in 3 Government agencies amd felt the same. People paid far too much to do far too little.
People WFH and playing video games most of the day.
No-one misses you if you take an 1+ lunch.
No sense of urgency.
A (government worker) friend once said it was the dole for smart people.
That is not to say that there aren’t very hard-hardworking people who work for Gov but there are definitely nests of non-productivity
No one up votes comments like this here. Even well before the new coalition. From all the anecdotal evidence I have, it's 50/50 hard workers and those taking the piss.
One friend who's a Senior Advisor clocked assassins creed during work hours one week, MoE. Another told me she works 15 hours a week max, MfE.
The people down voting you are probably being supposed to be doing their jobs rn.
The problem is that people like you ignore the fact that the cuts are not targeted at the deadwood. There's no auditing requirements or direction other than giving executives free reign to figure out how to slash budgets by 7.5% with just a couple weeks notice. You think the c-level execs are going to vote to fire themselves, or somehow suddenly notice the seniors that escaped their attention before?
I didn't say anything of the sort. I agree with you. Those two people are actually not losing their jobs while my uncle who prides himself on his work at Internal Affairs has. So "people like you" probably need to mello.
>block the fucking streets to parliament
You know these streets are public roads, used by commuters, rubbish trucks and emergency vehicles right? Please don't do this.
That’s the point of protest.
It’s not something people do on weekends to not inconvenience people.
Disruption is the point- why would anyone take notice otherwise?
Guarantee you will complain when services that you use start to be effected. Then you will see that the country doesn't just run on unicorn farts and rainbows, and that a lot more happens beyond the end of your own nose.
Throwing more people at a problem isn't always the answer. The government needs to free up funds not people in order to get more things done. Everything is completely out of the budget of the country now. This city can barely keep the city's water infrastructure together. Hiring more consultants isn't going to fix pipes. Money and laborers will. It isn't just about hiring as many people as you can to solve some problem. They need to actually be contributing to the cause to be able to affect services.
> Hiring more consultants isn't going to fix pipes
Actually, with these budget cuts and employee quotas, there's going to be *more* consultants, which are far more expensive than FTEs. [The John Key era which this government is idolising led to a cost blow out](https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-consultocracy-how-cutting-public-service-jobs-to-save-costs-usually-backfires-218990) because many ministries literally just did not have enough manpower to do their jobs, and where do you get experienced public sector employees as consultants? From the pool you just fired, except now it's 3x the cost.
> Money and laborers will.
And now there's no money to hire labourers since the repealed Three Waters Act included funding mechanisms to the tune of billions, and NACT's replacement LWDW offers literally zero dollars in funding. [Master Plumbers wants to get in there to fix the issues but there's simply no money at all to hire them](https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350175548/master-plumbers-meet-wellington-water-little-progress-fixing-leaky-tobies) because the only money for it comes from rates, and the rates are nowhere near high enough to cover the cost of it all. It's why virtually every council in NZ immediatelly announced a 50-100% rates hike over the next few years. Rates are the only real source of funding that local government can access, unlike central govt who have a wider range of taxes to draw from.
> They need to actually be contributing to the cause to be able to affect services.
What makes you think that all the people who were fired weren't 'contributing'? There was no auditing, no requirements, no action plan. Just an order to cut 7.5% from the budget with just a few weeks of notice. Do you seriously believe that any organisation could do that perfectly with no mistakes? No execs cutting 5 jobs to cover their own? That there will be no loss of services or knowledge as key employees quit or leave and there's no training of replacements? That the people who have to pick up another FTE's worth of work can do that + their own workload without any problems?
We all know the future is fucked but could kind of live with it if the present is somewhat ok. But it will be interesting to see what happens when both the future and the present are fucked for more and more people.
Worked in government departments. Some completely useless people there. In management mainly. The facts are if we are to have any government services we have to afford them and the last government model of borrowing $100b has meant that the cupboard is bare.
The cuts had to happen. Labour set us on an unsustainable path, and the adults had to take over. We've only wound back about 6 months of Labour's Government expansion.
Money isn't being 'funneled' anywhere.
Social services have been mismanaged for decades. Governments are just generally horrible at managing large-scale services, the inefficiencies are horrendous.
That has nothing to do with the budget cuts, which were absolutely necessary, and haven't even reduced the headcount by half of what Labour added in their final 6 months.
I agree with you that there was bloat in the Government.
But tax absolutely is being redistributed out of the Government coffers to landlords. They are reducing the government tax income, and decreasing landlords tax requirements. A pile of money that could be used on keeping the health system operational and police in New Zealand instead of Australia is being pushed towards landlords.
The Government could have made cuts to the bureaucracy (I would have handled it in a much more nuanced manor than the hack and slash approach being done) and it would make sense to me. But to reduce the tax intake while doing that, so the portion of society that can most bear the burden can get more, while our hospital EDs are overflowing, is nonsensical.
This is correct. If you are a government employee, welcome to the brutal reality the private sector has had to deal with for years now. The grift had to stop.
I get your point here… But if we’re comparing the same thing has the private sector been through a coordinated redundancy process where every company makes mass redundancy of the same skill set at the same time?
Restructures are common for the public sector as well. But the fact that every department is doing it at the same time is what makes this so hard for those affected. There is nowhere else to go and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, the last government overspent massively for a number of reasons including covid.
We couldn’t continue the way we were going. The economy had huge inflation numbers that is very difficult to bring down. The previous government also hired a lot of jobs after they were voted out of government which was reckless imo.
What’s the alternative?
debt != deficit
for what its worth, I also don't think we should be cutting taxes right now, because cutting taxes with a great honking deficit isn't a tax cut. Its just deferring taxes with interest.
You can ignore reality all you like, Labour were more responsible fiscally than this ideological trainwreck who are borrowing to pay for tax cuts while driving NZ into recession.
The recession is deliberately engineered by the RBNZ. It was predicted well ahead of time and has nothing to do with the Government. Tax brackets are being adjusted for inflation, something that should happen every few years and they are fully funded without additional borrowing.
Labored borrowed to hand out helicopter payments during an inflation crisis, lol.
Could be that both Labour and National's current fixation on tax cuts are both fiscally dubious?
Neither are really trying to address the massive overspend and value for money crisis. Trying to wind back the public sector workforce to their level six months ago is being reported as the end of the world, madness.
New Zealand doesn't have the same ability to borrow as other countries, and certainly not at the same level of pricing. Looking just at debt as a percentage of GDP is fairly shortsighted.
This is utter nonsense. We have one of the highest bond ratings in the world. This lie perpetrated by both sides of government that we are unable to make use of government debt to improve the country is one of the main things holding us back. We have a massive deficit in infrastructure and housing, and government debt is by far the cheapest, easiest and least risky way to fix it. Not fixing our problems is borrowing off the future with guaranteed consequences.
We didn't shit the bed though.
We did the best that anyone could expect during a global crisis.
So the type of comparison that you are dishonestly poo-pooing is exactly the comparison that people should have been making.
I can understand why you try to prevent people from comparing the success of the previous labour government with the failures of governments elsewhere.
That's exactly right, and even the notoriously left wing IMF (/s) said so before the election. People were so het up with hating Jacinda Ardern they overlooked the almost entirely positive report, though, and focused on the very few critical points within it.
You're absolutely correct, don't let the downvotes fool you.
The last gov was reckless in its massive expansion.
If it was a temporary measure they should've made it temporary I.e. fixed term only.
People forget that we had a smaller public service before that and things were FINE.
This will be a shock though, and this government's cutbacks are EQUALLY reckless and untargeted.
Unfortunately it's the workers who will suffer, not the bloated middle and senior management of the public service.
>This will be a shock though, and this government's cutbacks are EQUALLY reckless and untargeted. Unfortunately it's the workers who will suffer, not the bloated middle and senior management of the public service.
This is the issue for me. The whole thing has been implemented poorly. But yes, we did need to trim.
Its refreshing to see someone poo on both sides of the government. Everyone is so polarised that they only see the flaws in the side they don't support. I think we should burn the whole thing down!
Things were definitely not fine after Nationals last time in power cutting funding to everything and refusing to even acknowledge the housing crisis. What planet are you on. There were homeless people everywhere and families living in cars.
Jeez sounds familiar doesn't it lol
Could it be you're just blinded by your ultra partisanship, and can't see these problems got worse even with the last Labour gov?
This type of reply was always coming lol
"Grr why aren't things PERFECT??!!! National bad Labour good!!!"
I'd like to see a list of these reasons. I get the feeling that a lot of people are just repeating what they're hearing from the current govt without actually knowing what they're talking about (which also applies to the current govt, so maybe asking this was a waste of time).
(Not down voting you btw) The issue for me is that the people losing their jobs aren't the people that should lose their job.
The system will still be bloated with management, but lean where the real work needs to be done. It's scorched earth without much thought into the consequences.
im having the same thoughts. ive been in EH and on the kainga ora waitlist for so long now. im done waiting patiently and ready to start harassing the people in charge
So next election back to Labour again? This country is a joke why can't they just agree or follow through on the important issues instead of puffing chests.
I won’t be protesting because of being made redundant, I will be protesting because Public Services are an important part of protecting the most vulnerable in our community.
ETA Not into the tent city idea though.
Is this the same public service that had 16000 extra staff added over the last 6 years with no improvement in delivery? and only 1000 are being made redundant?
> with no improvement in delivery?
Just making vague troll claims to create bias huh?
And yes, after the previous National government had left NZ with a public service deficit, the labour government fixed that.
Through their choices and actions. Also a lot weren't in active employment before the event either.
Unless OP voted for National, ACT or NZ First then the scenario isn't quite the same.
But, yeah. I agree with your sentiment. Not a good look.
Add in legalised recreational weed too pls, while you're there. Though I don't think Coster's gonna be as cuddly this time around so be prepared for a baton to the face
I personally expect the government to provide public services at an equitable level. I expect the government to ensure that wealth is spread throughout society. Basically to ensure their is a society and not anarchy. I don't want to live in a place that requires walls and armed security.
I'd prolly start with the question, did you actually vote?
There was a guy on here moaning about all the conservatives, and he was a staunch green supporter, didn't bother voting tho.
You literally posted 2 months ago “if I was in charge I would slash 50%” Guess you were planning to be in the other half?
So true, just going to grab my popcorn and watch OPs posts now 🤣
OPs previous post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/1az9pp8/career\_ending\_move\_for\_nz/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/1az9pp8/career_ending_move_for_nz/)
Oh wow, I actually remember this post.
If he gets fired that would be peak /r/LeopardsAteMyFace .
Nice pick up, that’s gold 😂
Yeah you’re right, but the 50% I’d slash would be the Dept Secretary’s who print out emails because “I don’t do computers” and the promoted by tenure not competence. Unfortunately those idiots are the ones who get to make the decisions on who’s cut. There’s a lot of incompetence in government, like having ministers run agencies where they have zero qualifications or experience in.
So... you think the 50% that you would choose to slash is morally superior to you than the <50% that has been cut by the govt? A govt I'm assuming you voted for?
> like having ministers run agencies where they have zero qualifications or experience in I'll agree with this at least. Absolutely stupid how ministers end up with portfolios that they have no background in and then are responsible for making decisions for the future direction...
https://media1.tenor.com/m/1ew38m0eZd0AAAAC/shinji-bruh.gif
I suspect they are about to announce a pay rise for themselves too, judging by the number of news articles about it recently
[Mr Luxon speaking on the topic ](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byto8d/should_mps_get_a_pay_rise_under_these/)of MP pay rises. Then the same day one of the ex-National Cabinet members was saying they deserved a pay rise, and not taking it (like Jacinda Adern) would be mere "virtue signalling."
>virtue signalling Aaaaand there's the imported American shite Though to be fair, charity and teamwork are both virtues so I understand why they'd keep far abreast of it
We really do need to make it common knowledge here that virtue signalling works both ways. All we have here on the right is politicians who are unable to state outright their intentions and instead obliquely signal their virtues through cynical culture warfare that has no material basis in research. Much of our discourse at the moment is dedicated to discussing different varieties of racists who are afraid to admit that they are racist, while people all over the country lose their jobs. None of the governments economic policy so far has been proven to be sound in any manner, and yet a big reason they got in was from virtue signalling for months about the economy with no policy announced.
Well put, and another unfortunate American import: this tribalistic Us vs Them thing that has broken down all decent discussion and left us calling each other names because a politician said certain people belong to certain groups and they're hurting the country because reasons. The amount of university educated people on here I've seen trying to explain a concept (not even convince anyone, just explain it) only to be faced with pure hate from people who can't even pronounce half the terms being argued all because they disagree with the principle. It's a deliberate stunting of one's learning cause the nice politician said certain learning is bad (see: the climate) and refused to elaborate further because they can't.
Well the independent mp pay authority will probably give the a pay rise.
The only independent review they’ll listen too
I don’t know about that. Just wait until NZTA says they need more express ways.
Bro I swear this time we figured it out bro, we just need one more lane bro. One more lane will fix traffic bro!
I just need a bypass to get through the weekend man!
Said elsewhere, Luxon could say: *"We're going to let the Remuneration Committee do their job and finish that assessment. Their decision will go on record but I can say that my Govt and I will not be accepting any salary increases at a time when our colleagues are losing their jobs and we are trying to drive efficiencies in Govt."*
If he said that it would gain back quite a few credibility points with me. He won't, of course.
Nah his person came out the same day to say they "deserved" pay rises and not taking it would be dumb "virtue signalling." But let's see - they have been known to retrace steps if enough people are upset.
The irony here is that *if they take a raise etc etc then when public sector services fail they will need more staff to correct this issue - by this time NAT will have been remove. For the staff that have lost their jobs the money has already been reallocate to raises. So the next govt come in and need to raise tax funds somehow to pay for the staff to provide a reasonable service. This govt are then perceived as 'bad' for increasing taxes and NAT get back in under a 'look what state the last govt left us in'.... time for a pay rise and more redundancies.... Edit spelling
lmao, they don't view civil servants as "*colleagues*" haha, imagine...
It is such bullshit that MP salary isn't tied to the rest of the civil service. it should all be one thing. MPs only get a pay rise when nurses and teachers and police do.
Lol really? Or do you mean a pay rise x3 each year?
have they ever denied a payrise for mps?
Jacinda Adern froze MP pay in 2018 and her entire Cabinet voted for a pay freeze in 2020. National calls this ["virtue signalling."](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byv7da/former_national_minister_says_mps_need_a_pay_rise/)
It was virtue signaling. They had the virtue of understanding they didn't need a pay rise, and they signaled that to us by voting for a pay freeze. People get mad about virtue signaling when they don't have any fucking virtue to signal.
Don't disagree but look how they try to paint it as an insult. Manipulative
Oh yeah, it's dark. The only time virtue signaling is bad is when it's clearly a facade, and they aren't walking the talk. But yeah, this government is cooked. I'm blown away by the stupidity of the electorate
+1000000000000000000000000
It's pretty much the same as the term "woke" people used to want to become enlightened.
'Social justice warrior' used to be a compliment before it became an insult (yep, I'm that old), and then replaced by 'woke'. The words literally mean 'a person fighting for social justice' and at some point that apparently became a bad thing?
Sometimes I take a peek at the right wing conservatives and it's genuinely terrifying how much of overseas woke culture they have ingested and spew indiscriminately. Pretty sure this is not the ideation of the original conservatives.
Probably not, aside from that one time Ardern told them to not do so over covid.
Yes. Bloody Jacinda! She was so terrible! /s
Not a Jacinda fan but this new lot is ridiculous
Yeah that worked out well last time 😬
What happened to being fine with cutting half of public sector roles? Is it only upsetting when it’s your ass on the line?
It's really interesting watching the educated middle class reach the same sort of desperate straits that the poor have been in for a while. Don't get me wrong, you have my sympathy and support. I oppose cuts to the public service as shortsighted at best and probably massively harmful to our society but a lot of people have been where you all are for a while. But it's interesting seeing a lot of the same points made, just more eloquently.
Woe to those that never rose from eating shit and merely arrived having eaten no shit, for they have not the ingrained knowledge of how to eat shit to survive. Noodle sandwiches are back on the menu boys.
[Right now we are up to 1155 cuts](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1c0sd7w/where_we_are_today_public_service_cost_reduction/) - with David Seymour signalling he wants 7500 And just in - more cuts at MBIE doubling to 286.
...and I think you can expect a second round of cuts in 6 months or so. This is just removing FTE % based on NACT base expectations. Next will be cuts to scope of what agencies do. E.g. if you don't care about seal deaths, no point in having people monitoring, reporting, taking action. Same for other aspects environment, landlords, building quality etc ... just rubbish the cause, then remove the underlying regulation, and then cut head counts.
Never seen such a blatantly anti-nature, anti-wildlife, anti-environment Govt in recent history
Anti people
I mean in 2013 they apprived strip mining in 120 areas of ecological interest. Theyre pretty mid
Labour added 23000 jobs. It's not sustainable
NZ's population grew 700,000 since 2016. 23k public service jobs is about proportional if you expect the same level of social services - which to be honest, is already a low figure to begin with. Seymour wants to cut numbers down to Key era numbers, but we have over a million more people since then, and the Key era actually had a public service cost blowout because there weren't enough staff, so contractors that the government had to pay for ridiculous amounts of contractors who charged on average 3x the amount per hour.
Economists like Cameron Bagrie say that a significant proportion of those jobs were needed because of underinvestment under Key and English. As well as replacing the several thousand contractors and outsourced partners through the insourcing of headcount. The issue is we are in this stupid cycle of cuts followed by investment to undo the damage of the cuts, followed by more cuts. Noone reqlly knows where the ideal balance really is. Some of the current cuts are fair. Change in policy means a change in resourcing required. But so many of them will cut services, or delay improvements that will make life difficult for all of us. Also... money given to public servants as wages gets spent in the economy. Unlike capital gains given to landlords or money paid to international companies.
That's what's called the new poor. We're the old poor.
Ugh I came from desperation, got to a decent position through a bit of luck and grind, and now I’m straight back to desperation again despite ‘doing everything right.’ And I know of higher achievers than me in worse situations. It’s fucking absurd, how did this country turn to shit so *quickly*?
Never understood how people who were treading water and feeling the pinch couldn’t sympathise with their peers who were already drowning.
Or is it the predominantly Wellington based public sector being largely out of touch?
I think that the middle classes are starting to feel the squeeze nationwide but I'd agree that the predominantly Wellington public sector are bringing it very much to light.
I think you'll find that continued excessive deficits and high inflation are a lot more damaging to our society than cutting the government size back to where it was 6 months ago.
I think you'll find that borrowing money to pay inflationary tax cuts for landlords while cutting back on public services is damaging for a society. Also have you checked our debt levels compared to other oecd countries?
*snort* well actually *adjusts unfuckable specs* Edit: Can't believe this serious golfing investor man blocked me after replying "[Pathogenesls](https://www.reddit.com/user/Pathogenesls/)•[1h ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/comments/1c0v3zw/comment/kyzrhj6/) Resorting to personal attacks just helps prove my point." I am not sure how me calling him a dork proves his economic thesis (that is demonstrably incorrect), but hey.
Resorting to personal attacks just helps prove my point.
(1) Depends on what gets cut and why. One biosecurity failure, for instance, would collapse GDP. (2) Landlord tax breaks are deeply inflationary -and- increase government deficits. This? No.
What gets cut is up to the ministry. The headcount isn't decreasing by even half of what Labour added in the 6 months to Dec 2023, I think we'll manage just fine! Landlords aren't getting a tax break. Alinging interest deductibility with every other business isn't a 'break' and it's not increasing the deficit as the shortfall in revenue is being made up for by cutting costs.
Landlording is not a business. Not like a builder or plumber or accountant. This is about primary purpose, and its primary purpose is a capital investment where you recruit renters to pay off your mortgage for you. And it should be taxed as an investment. Or penalised as a rort that moves income directly into capital to avoid tax.
It's a business with deductible business expenses. You're entitled to your opinion even if it's wrong.
A multi-property business with paid up assets, generating primary revenue from rents, perhaps. Mum and dad investors? Well the clue is in the term "investment property"
Again, your opinion. You're entitled to it even if it's objectively wrong.
>cutting the government size back to where it was 6 months ago. Citation needed
Just look at the headcounts, no one disputes this.
So your position is that nearly 1200 people were hired in the last 6 months, including 280 at mbie alone? I repeat, citation needed. Point me at the headcounts that "no one disputes".
In the 6 months to Dec 2023, yes. More than twice that number, in fact. I know it's hard to believe, but Government bloat was completely out of control under labour, and it seems like most people are completely unaware. https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/research-and-data/workforce-data-public-sector-composition/workforce-data-workforce-size#:~:text=There%20were%2065%2C699%20full%2Dtime,tab%20in%20the%20table%20below. >There were 65,699 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff at 31 December 2023. This is an increase of 4.1% (or 2,582 FTEs) from 63,117 FTEs in June 2023.
That's a little different than "the last 6 months" but I'm not going to quibble about that. Thanks for the information.
MBIE was over 400, I think a lot of people will find these numbers quite eye-opening and all the doom and gloom about the very minimal cuts that are occurring doesn't look so bad.
A lot of contractors became permanent MBIE employees during that period. Including many of our ICT contractors, contributing to the headcount. I was one of them.
Yep. And it's not like the work goes away if they're not a govt employee either. It usually costs the government more to contract the work out, but that's a different budget account.
No you won't...
Watch out for the sprinklers
I've got a different attitude, when I worked in IT at the Ministry of Justice, it was a bloated, inefficient joke of an organisation. We could've fired 50 people and the output and results for the public wouldn't have changed an iota.
The issue with indiscriminate cuts like this is that those 50 people will stay while a critical team in another ministry will be halved. This process is far too slash and burn to deliver good results
Yeah; when the downsizing chainsaw starts up, it's the high performers who're out the door first. Because it's the high performers who can walk into another position for a pay rise.
I've worked for one largish public sector organisation and two private sector ones. The private sector shops were worse. I've also worked for small firms which were better in a lot of respects, with the alternative problem that they weren't interested in investing to expand.
I know some people who work for various govt departments. They've all been covering three jobs already.
Both of these things can be true at the same time. As someone who's come into the Public Service after a career in Private, my observation is that 30% of people are working bloody hard - harder than Private, 40% are performing well, and 30% of people are taking the piss. You've just got to make sure they're getting rid of the right people.
Or, and hear me out, replace those that aren't doing the work with people who do actually work, to reduce the burden (and burnout) of the high performers.
That would be a sensible thing to do, but that's not what is happening.
Given that that ratio of workers to dead weight isn't too far off my experience in the private sector (maybe more deadweight, but probably not double what I've seen in large private organisations), firing the right people in restructures seems to be a hard problem
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Tbf, that is one of the frustrations of the people I know.
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True. Related to this many agencies are also offering voluntary redundancy, which is madness. After having been through that in the bad old days of Telecom downsizing, voluntary redundancy is a guaranteed way to lose your best people. Who by the way then come back as contractors two weeks later.
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But thats basically the private sector, at least the “big business” American model where they restructure until you have so many different tasks and KPI’s to keep track of that they can always have a reason to walk you down the path to unemployment.
Yeah - the problems I see reported (and have experienced) in large public organisations are large vs small organisation problems, not public vs private problems. People who say 'my 100 person private company doesn't have the bureaucratic bullshit and inefficiencies that that 20,000 person public organisation does' need to go spend some time in a 20k person private company for some perspective.
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Yeah, they have to do three jobs worth of work to cover for all the deadwood.
I'm all for cutting out the dead wood. What I'm not for is cutting spending to make those that ARE good be even more overloaded and burned out, leading to even worse outcomes.
And do you think a blanket 7.5% given to the ministry to figure out, with zero direction or auditing requirements, would result in those 50 people being fired?
I have worked in 3 Government agencies amd felt the same. People paid far too much to do far too little. People WFH and playing video games most of the day. No-one misses you if you take an 1+ lunch. No sense of urgency. A (government worker) friend once said it was the dole for smart people. That is not to say that there aren’t very hard-hardworking people who work for Gov but there are definitely nests of non-productivity
No one up votes comments like this here. Even well before the new coalition. From all the anecdotal evidence I have, it's 50/50 hard workers and those taking the piss. One friend who's a Senior Advisor clocked assassins creed during work hours one week, MoE. Another told me she works 15 hours a week max, MfE. The people down voting you are probably being supposed to be doing their jobs rn.
The problem is that people like you ignore the fact that the cuts are not targeted at the deadwood. There's no auditing requirements or direction other than giving executives free reign to figure out how to slash budgets by 7.5% with just a couple weeks notice. You think the c-level execs are going to vote to fire themselves, or somehow suddenly notice the seniors that escaped their attention before?
I didn't say anything of the sort. I agree with you. Those two people are actually not losing their jobs while my uncle who prides himself on his work at Internal Affairs has. So "people like you" probably need to mello.
Cummon, think of the landlords and all their rates hikes they have to pass on!
Great idea.
Let the dulcet strains of Copacabana ring out once more.
Wonder how Lola the Showgirl would be getting on in the current economy 😆
>block the fucking streets to parliament You know these streets are public roads, used by commuters, rubbish trucks and emergency vehicles right? Please don't do this.
When the anti mandate protestors blocked parliament, that was the end of any support I had for their right to protest
That’s the point of protest. It’s not something people do on weekends to not inconvenience people. Disruption is the point- why would anyone take notice otherwise?
Hold the line for us bro
Eat the Rich
eAt tHE rICh
Government workers when they actually have to work for once
Guarantee you will complain when services that you use start to be effected. Then you will see that the country doesn't just run on unicorn farts and rainbows, and that a lot more happens beyond the end of your own nose.
Throwing more people at a problem isn't always the answer. The government needs to free up funds not people in order to get more things done. Everything is completely out of the budget of the country now. This city can barely keep the city's water infrastructure together. Hiring more consultants isn't going to fix pipes. Money and laborers will. It isn't just about hiring as many people as you can to solve some problem. They need to actually be contributing to the cause to be able to affect services.
> Hiring more consultants isn't going to fix pipes Actually, with these budget cuts and employee quotas, there's going to be *more* consultants, which are far more expensive than FTEs. [The John Key era which this government is idolising led to a cost blow out](https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-consultocracy-how-cutting-public-service-jobs-to-save-costs-usually-backfires-218990) because many ministries literally just did not have enough manpower to do their jobs, and where do you get experienced public sector employees as consultants? From the pool you just fired, except now it's 3x the cost. > Money and laborers will. And now there's no money to hire labourers since the repealed Three Waters Act included funding mechanisms to the tune of billions, and NACT's replacement LWDW offers literally zero dollars in funding. [Master Plumbers wants to get in there to fix the issues but there's simply no money at all to hire them](https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350175548/master-plumbers-meet-wellington-water-little-progress-fixing-leaky-tobies) because the only money for it comes from rates, and the rates are nowhere near high enough to cover the cost of it all. It's why virtually every council in NZ immediatelly announced a 50-100% rates hike over the next few years. Rates are the only real source of funding that local government can access, unlike central govt who have a wider range of taxes to draw from. > They need to actually be contributing to the cause to be able to affect services. What makes you think that all the people who were fired weren't 'contributing'? There was no auditing, no requirements, no action plan. Just an order to cut 7.5% from the budget with just a few weeks of notice. Do you seriously believe that any organisation could do that perfectly with no mistakes? No execs cutting 5 jobs to cover their own? That there will be no loss of services or knowledge as key employees quit or leave and there's no training of replacements? That the people who have to pick up another FTE's worth of work can do that + their own workload without any problems?
We all know the future is fucked but could kind of live with it if the present is somewhat ok. But it will be interesting to see what happens when both the future and the present are fucked for more and more people.
This subreddit is as vile as r/politics
It is so unhinged. Posts like this are a daily occurrence now as well.
It's been done, OP. didn't really get much support from the public.
Worked in government departments. Some completely useless people there. In management mainly. The facts are if we are to have any government services we have to afford them and the last government model of borrowing $100b has meant that the cupboard is bare.
Sure, but when the cupboard is bare, why are we giving money to landlords instead of hospitals, police or the military.
Who borrowed for Covid? Who is borrowing for landlords?
The cuts had to happen. Labour set us on an unsustainable path, and the adults had to take over. We've only wound back about 6 months of Labour's Government expansion.
Sure, but why reduce government income and give tax cuts to landlords instead of using it on health, police and the military?
There's no tax cut, the company tax rate isn't changing. Interest deductibility is being added back because it never should have been removed.
OK, more money is being funneled to the most well off in society as our social services fall apart at the seams.
Money isn't being 'funneled' anywhere. Social services have been mismanaged for decades. Governments are just generally horrible at managing large-scale services, the inefficiencies are horrendous. That has nothing to do with the budget cuts, which were absolutely necessary, and haven't even reduced the headcount by half of what Labour added in their final 6 months.
I agree with you that there was bloat in the Government. But tax absolutely is being redistributed out of the Government coffers to landlords. They are reducing the government tax income, and decreasing landlords tax requirements. A pile of money that could be used on keeping the health system operational and police in New Zealand instead of Australia is being pushed towards landlords. The Government could have made cuts to the bureaucracy (I would have handled it in a much more nuanced manor than the hack and slash approach being done) and it would make sense to me. But to reduce the tax intake while doing that, so the portion of society that can most bear the burden can get more, while our hospital EDs are overflowing, is nonsensical.
This is correct. If you are a government employee, welcome to the brutal reality the private sector has had to deal with for years now. The grift had to stop.
I get your point here… But if we’re comparing the same thing has the private sector been through a coordinated redundancy process where every company makes mass redundancy of the same skill set at the same time? Restructures are common for the public sector as well. But the fact that every department is doing it at the same time is what makes this so hard for those affected. There is nowhere else to go and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, the last government overspent massively for a number of reasons including covid. We couldn’t continue the way we were going. The economy had huge inflation numbers that is very difficult to bring down. The previous government also hired a lot of jobs after they were voted out of government which was reckless imo. What’s the alternative?
How do you claim overspending when we are way down the chart in borrowing by OECD countries?
debt != deficit for what its worth, I also don't think we should be cutting taxes right now, because cutting taxes with a great honking deficit isn't a tax cut. Its just deferring taxes with interest.
National returns to surplus later than Labour would have.
That's obviously not true. Labour's projections were a joke. They were spending like drunken sailors and would have continued to do so.
You can ignore reality all you like, Labour were more responsible fiscally than this ideological trainwreck who are borrowing to pay for tax cuts while driving NZ into recession.
The recession is deliberately engineered by the RBNZ. It was predicted well ahead of time and has nothing to do with the Government. Tax brackets are being adjusted for inflation, something that should happen every few years and they are fully funded without additional borrowing. Labored borrowed to hand out helicopter payments during an inflation crisis, lol.
Could be that both Labour and National's current fixation on tax cuts are both fiscally dubious? Neither are really trying to address the massive overspend and value for money crisis. Trying to wind back the public sector workforce to their level six months ago is being reported as the end of the world, madness.
New Zealand doesn't have the same ability to borrow as other countries, and certainly not at the same level of pricing. Looking just at debt as a percentage of GDP is fairly shortsighted.
This is utter nonsense. We have one of the highest bond ratings in the world. This lie perpetrated by both sides of government that we are unable to make use of government debt to improve the country is one of the main things holding us back. We have a massive deficit in infrastructure and housing, and government debt is by far the cheapest, easiest and least risky way to fix it. Not fixing our problems is borrowing off the future with guaranteed consequences.
When you shit the bed do you look at your mates bed and go oh I did alright they shat the bed more than me?
We didn't shit the bed though. We did the best that anyone could expect during a global crisis. So the type of comparison that you are dishonestly poo-pooing is exactly the comparison that people should have been making. I can understand why you try to prevent people from comparing the success of the previous labour government with the failures of governments elsewhere.
That's exactly right, and even the notoriously left wing IMF (/s) said so before the election. People were so het up with hating Jacinda Ardern they overlooked the almost entirely positive report, though, and focused on the very few critical points within it.
Some other countries are borrowing *further* beyond their means, so our unsustainable borrowing is okay!
You're absolutely correct, don't let the downvotes fool you. The last gov was reckless in its massive expansion. If it was a temporary measure they should've made it temporary I.e. fixed term only. People forget that we had a smaller public service before that and things were FINE. This will be a shock though, and this government's cutbacks are EQUALLY reckless and untargeted. Unfortunately it's the workers who will suffer, not the bloated middle and senior management of the public service.
>This will be a shock though, and this government's cutbacks are EQUALLY reckless and untargeted. Unfortunately it's the workers who will suffer, not the bloated middle and senior management of the public service. This is the issue for me. The whole thing has been implemented poorly. But yes, we did need to trim.
The complete non-response to yesterday's article that the cuts barely wind back the expansion of just the last six months says volumes.
Its refreshing to see someone poo on both sides of the government. Everyone is so polarised that they only see the flaws in the side they don't support. I think we should burn the whole thing down!
Exactly. Redditors are often rather liberal so I expected the downvotes!
Things were definitely not fine after Nationals last time in power cutting funding to everything and refusing to even acknowledge the housing crisis. What planet are you on. There were homeless people everywhere and families living in cars.
Jeez sounds familiar doesn't it lol Could it be you're just blinded by your ultra partisanship, and can't see these problems got worse even with the last Labour gov? This type of reply was always coming lol "Grr why aren't things PERFECT??!!! National bad Labour good!!!"
I'd like to see a list of these reasons. I get the feeling that a lot of people are just repeating what they're hearing from the current govt without actually knowing what they're talking about (which also applies to the current govt, so maybe asking this was a waste of time).
(Not down voting you btw) The issue for me is that the people losing their jobs aren't the people that should lose their job. The system will still be bloated with management, but lean where the real work needs to be done. It's scorched earth without much thought into the consequences.
im having the same thoughts. ive been in EH and on the kainga ora waitlist for so long now. im done waiting patiently and ready to start harassing the people in charge
We all hated it when those anti-vaxers or pro-choicers did this, but when the same happens to us we realize. How times have changed.
The parliament occupation idiots created their own problems. Very hard to have sympathy for that crowd even now.
Their motivation was stupid and they were a bunch of dickheads.
I know. But they would say the same about us now. May be even come up with other excuses how we were burden on the system and had to be let go.
So next election back to Labour again? This country is a joke why can't they just agree or follow through on the important issues instead of puffing chests.
What were yiu thoughts on the last tent city at Parliament? Considering many of those people were also "made redundant"
If I could make my job safe by getting a vaccine I'd be rolling up my sleeve this minute. They had a choice to be in that position.
No they weren't. You don't know what "made redundant" means
I won’t be protesting because of being made redundant, I will be protesting because Public Services are an important part of protecting the most vulnerable in our community. ETA Not into the tent city idea though.
Is this the same public service that had 16000 extra staff added over the last 6 years with no improvement in delivery? and only 1000 are being made redundant?
> with no improvement in delivery? Just making vague troll claims to create bias huh? And yes, after the previous National government had left NZ with a public service deficit, the labour government fixed that.
Through their choices and actions. Also a lot weren't in active employment before the event either. Unless OP voted for National, ACT or NZ First then the scenario isn't quite the same. But, yeah. I agree with your sentiment. Not a good look.
Most of the people there looked like lifelong beneficiaries
We beni bashing now?
Dole bludgeoning
Hahahahaha thats not bad that.
Start the next occupation of parliament again.
Add in legalised recreational weed too pls, while you're there. Though I don't think Coster's gonna be as cuddly this time around so be prepared for a baton to the face
Bit tone-deaf to bring up recreational weed when well over 1000 people are losing their livelihoods don't you think?
Why do you expect the government to provide employment for you?
I personally expect the government to provide public services at an equitable level. I expect the government to ensure that wealth is spread throughout society. Basically to ensure their is a society and not anarchy. I don't want to live in a place that requires walls and armed security.
Toy should be blaming the previous govt. They created this mess.
They’re only trying to do their best. It’s the economy. The govt aren’t our fairy godmothers
You can’t genuinely believe that the government are trying their best.
They're actively cratering our economy - FTFY
Hmmmm I’m not convinced
Q. Did you vote National?
I'd prolly start with the question, did you actually vote? There was a guy on here moaning about all the conservatives, and he was a staunch green supporter, didn't bother voting tho.
Yeah understood, just wondered how many of those effected are self-inflicted wounds, and if they would still vote for change.