So, minister, what is it we’re actually meant to DO with AI?

Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Most Government departments must achieve 2% baseline savings this year, then 5% in following years according to Willis's budget announcement.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says artificial intelligence and digitisation will help save $2.4 billion over four years, and cut thousands of public service jobs.

Stuff asked ministers how they’re using AI, and how they think it could work in their departments.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says the use of AI and “digitisation” will help save $2.4 billion over the next four years, and cut thousands of jobs from the public service.

But many ministers aren’t quite sure how, exactly, AI is going to cut costs and jobs in their departments.

After Willis made her pre-Budget announcement on Tuesday, reporters asked ministers how they used AI and what they thought it could do to bring down costs.

During her big pre-Budget speech at a business lunch in Auckland, Willis told the crowd: “Our Government is as frustrated as you are by the fragmentation and silos, the complexity, the status-quo thinking and the dangerously slow take up of digital and AI technologies.”

She promised the adoption of AI tools, as well as mergers of departments, would drive cost savings over the next four years.

Most departments have a target of reducing baseline savings by 2% at this year’s Budget, and then 5% next year and the year after, Willis said. She also announced a target of reducing the public sector workforce by 8700 people, down to 55,000 by mid-2029.

“For too long, the public service has been scared of AI, slow to move to the cloud, and has procured a complex and fragmented set of overlapping IT solutions,” she said.

Some ministers, such as Health Minister Simeon Brown and Conservation Minister Tama Potaka, had clear ideas about what AI could do in their departments. But many others weren’t sure how AI could work for them and their ministries.

Digitising Government, and Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith

Goldsmith, who joined Willis for the announcement in Auckland, said he wasn’t sure how exactly AI tools would be deployed across the public service.

“Look, enormous opportunities right across the board, and none of us know what they are yet. Some of them will be things that we've never even thought about,” he said.

Some of the savings wouldn’t be from AI, but from pretty basic changes to public sector operations. In courts, Goldsmith said they were moving away from a “paper-based system”.

Asked if he personally used AI, Goldsmith paused and then said he asks a Large Language Model (LLM) for its opinions on ideas he has.

“It comes up with a starter and gets you thinking about things that you haven't before, so that's one area, but there's many more,” he said.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis

In the Beehive, Willis said Ministerial Services used CoPilot for a range of things.

As Stuff previously reported, Willis’ office uses that tool to improve the spelling and grammar in her speeches. Apart from that, she said she and her team did not often use AI.

“I want to be really candid here. We hadn't been using a huge amount of AI in my office, and when we embarked as a government down this path, it became clear to me that if I'm asking the public service to use more of these tools, then I need to understand them better,” she said.

“Relatively recently” she said she told her staff to “unleash” the AI.

“Don't be scared, be prepared to use them, and I've been really impressed by how my staff have been able to deploy those tools to great effect, and so I'd encourage anyone, give it a go,” she said.

Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds

While the Ministry of Education was mostly exempt from the Government’s cost savings targets, the tertiary education offices would need to return savings.

Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds said the Government was asking departments such as the Tertiary Education Commission to use AI to cut staffing.

“Look, I think anything’s possible with AI, but they can work through what they can do with it,” she said.

She didn’t offer any examples of how AI would reduce the need for staff.

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka

Potaka said AI was already being rolled out at the Department of Conservation to review outdated “management plans and strategies”.

“There’s an absolutely diabolical situation with nearly 100 management plans and strategies, some of which are severely out of date - actually, the majority, 80% are.

“DOC uses AI in the interpretation of those strategies and management plans to enable decision making. So that's already been used. I think it could be used in additional ways,” he said.

Health Minister Simeon Brown

Across hospitals, an “AI Scribe” has been rolled out to cut back note taking.

“AI will never replace clinical skill or judgment, but it will play an increasingly important role in supporting frontline healthcare staff,” Brown said.

Regulations Minister David Seymour

Seymour said he believed more AI use would reduce the need for public servants.

“AI actually enabled you to do more with fewer people,” he said.

He said AI was being used already by people writing to Parliament and departments, and he thought it could also be used to read those public submissions.