ACT wants more than 10,000 public service jobs on the chopping block, but National?
Monday, 21 August 2023
A National-ACT Government can be expected to slash the public service, or at least shake it up significantly, if elected in October.
Both National and ACT have made commitments to change the makeup of the public service – the various government agencies that are headquartered in Wellington – and while ACT has given some high-level figures for how much it wants to slash, National’s approach remains murky.
“National will move resourcing from the back-office to the front line, so New Zealanders can get the public services they deserve,” National’s public service spokesperson Simeon Brown said.
Brown and the party’s deputy leader, Nicola Willis, have both declined to give specifics on how National would shape the public service, saying it would be in the party’s upcoming tax plan. They have declined to provide a timeline for their proposed $400 million annual consultant and contractor slash, to say when and how they want to cut the “backroom bloat”, or if they would be comfortable with the headcount going to 2017 levels.
ACT leader David Seymour said the public service was “perfectly functional” in 2017, when had 15,000 fewer people. He said it should be taken back to 47,000 fulltime workers; as of June 2022 the Public Service Comission counted 60,381 fulltime workers.
But Seymour does not want to pare back every department, instead taking aim at certain ministries.
At a town hall meeting on Sunday, Seymour pushed his message of public service waste to a crowd of more than 200 Wellingtonians. He also announced a policy that near-matched National’s: performance targets for ministries, as well as KPIs for chief executives and a return to salaries that depend on good performance.
'ACT has produced an alternative budget, fully-costed, line-by-line, that shows how we could cut spending by about $9 billion a year, and it wouldn't touch a single teacher, nurse, police officer, doctor, or pothole filler that anybody would notice,” he told the audience.
In an interview, he said the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment should be slashed by up to 50%, while the Ministry of Justice could be spared as it “seems like an area where we're going to have to do a lot better”.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade was safe in ACT’s plan, “because in our view, New Zealand's been a bit inward looking lately, and the world has become a much more dangerous place”, as was Nema (the National Emergency Management Agency) and Corrections.
“I feel we need to do much better at rehabilitation,” he said.
The Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Social Development and Ministry of Education may not be so lucky.
ACT’s plan also includes abolishing various ministries, which collectively employ about 800 people, such as the Ministry for Women, and also Pacific Peoples.
Seymour created controversy last week, telling Newstalk ZB that in his “fantasy we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes, and it’d all be over” at the Ministry for Pacific Peoples.
Minister for Pacific Peoples Barbara Edmonds wrote to Seymour asking him to apologise, but he insisted again on Sunday he would not. He said Edmond’s letter “had found its way to the media”, meaning it was a political, rather than genuine, request.
Willis refused to be drawn on whether National agree with the extent to which Seymour wanted to cut the public service.
'I actually haven't looked at the detail of his figure. But are we aligned on the fact that there needs to be more discipline in the public service, less bureaucracy, more focus on the front line? Yes.
'We aligned on the fact that there needs to be more accountability. Yes.
'Are we aligned on the fact that there needs to be less dollars wasted on consultancy and backroom bureaucracy? Absolutely.”
Public Service Minister Andrew Little said the consequence of going down to 2017 levels would mean al lot of things wouldn’t get done.
“And the reality is, what ACT stands for is not doing things and minimising what the public service does, that just means New Zealanders missing out on services.”
Asked to elaborate if he wanted the public service headcount to decrease, increase or stay the same, Little said it was a “meaningless question”.
“What we want as a public service capable of doing the job of delivering the public services that New Zealanders need, doing the policy work that underpins that and supporting ministers to make good decisions.”
An area where all parties disagree is on the use of contractors in the public service.
Labour lifted the cap placed on the public service in 2018, blaming it for a surge in contractor and consultant spending to $550m in 2017,a figure that had risen from $278m when the last National Government first took office.
The latest figures show almost $900m over nine months was spent on contractors and consultants, expected to rise to $1.2b for the 2022/23 year – partly due to the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle.
Brown confirmed National’s commitment to capping and reducing contractor and consultant spend by $400m a year “to ensure we can get the waste out of Wellington and deliver better public services for the frontline”.
Seymour, on the other hand was “not here to make arbitrary policies about how many people should be on contracts, we're here to get outcomes for taxpayers”.
He said he would be comfortable spending $1 billion dollars a year on contractors and consultants if they were achieving outcomes worth that. He did not think they were currently.
“I don't think that contractors in and of themselves are not the problem, a total lack of objectives and a culture of irresponsibility with taxpayer money, whether the person is on an employment contract or contracted out, that's your problem.”
Little said he was not happy with the level spent on contractors and consultants, adding it had been trending down and there was a programme of work to reduce it further.
Snapshot of contractors in the public service:
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment as of March 31
Number of contractors currently employed - 374
Number of contractors who are business analysts or project managers – 67
Number of contractors employed longer than 6 months – 229
Of the 229, 134 were employed longer than a year.
Number of contractors who have had previous engagement with MBIE – 42 (This does not include people who were previously employed by MBIE, and then subsequently were employed by MBIE as a contractor)
Number of contractors being paid higher than the comparable pay band – 270 (this figure does not include a quarter of the contractors who do not have a comparable position title).
Department of Internal Affairs as of March 31
Number of contractors currently employed – 265
Business analysis – 11, Project managers – 5
Number of contractors employed longer than 6 months – 59
Number of contractors employed longer than one year – 74 (several are employed on a part-time or as required basis).
“When a contractor is filling an existing role, the hourly rate will be higher than the pay band for the comparable full time employed position to account for lack of job security and additional benefits”.
Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ as of April 30
Number of contractors currently employed - 680
Number of contractors who are business analysts – 63Project managers – 33
Number of contractors employed longer than 6 months – 407
HNZ did not hold the rest of the data questions.
Police as of December 2022
Number of contractors currently employed - request denied by police
Number of contractors employed longer than 6 months – 394
Number of contractors employed longer than one year – 242
Police did not provide the rest of the data.
Transpower – as of February 28
Number of contractors currently employed - 137 (110 FTE)
Number of contractors who are business analysts (12, 9 FTE) or project managers (18, 14 FTE)
Number of contractors employed longer than 6 months – 118
Number of contractors employed longer than one year – 65
Number of contractors who have had previous engagement with Transpower – 30
Number of contractors being paid higher than the comparable pay band – All
Ministry of Social Development – only provided yearly data
Number of contractors employed in 2021/22 – 732
Of that, 314 were initially contracted for less than nine months and 418 were contracted for more than nine months.
Ministry of Education – only provided 2021/22 data, with contractor and consultant use combined.
- Number of temporary staff contracted in 2021/22 – 1299 (through 16 recruitment companies)
NZDF – only provided 2021/22 data
Number of contractors employed – 66 (made up of 47 agencies with contractors employed on behalf of NZDF and 19 individual contractors directly contracted to NZDF).
Four contractors were employed for up to 12 months and 62 contractors for longer than one year.