David Seymour has found ‘substantial savings’ in the public service. Now it’s over to Willis

Friday, 21 March 2025

A “substantial amount” of savings in the public service has been found by Associate Finance Minister David Seymour, he says.

Now it’s over to Finance Minister Nicola Willis and the ministers responsible for each government agency to decide whether or not to go ahead with making them.

The Post reported in February the Government had begun asking public service agencies to find savings as it stared “down the barrel of a $17 billion deficit”, Seymour said at the time. He had been sent in to help ministries identify savings before the Government’s full plans for the public service are announced on Budget Day in May.

He told The Post on Thursday he had “identified a substantial amount of potential savings, and now it is up to the ministers responsible and ultimately the Minister of Finance to decide whether to make the savings or not”.

Treasury is also helping Willis identify programmes that are considered not a good investment. Alongside the savings programme, Willis said she had made her expectations clear to ministries and agencies that Budget proposals, in the first instance, should be paid for from within their existing budgets.

While plans are still in progress, The Post asked all ministries if any work programmes had been scrapped in the last four months.

Work programmes can be large projects or areas of policy carried out by agencies and departments, some are multi-year. Programmes can undergo significant shifts, including being scrapped altogether, to align with the direction and policy pledges of the government of the day.

Most denied any work programmes had ended. However, at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, business national manager Ross Van Der Schyff said it had closed its ‘Better for Business’ (B4B) programme.

The programme, which is about 14-years-old, “has helped government agencies gain an understanding of the business experience of dealing with government,” Van Der Schyff said.

“The Government has initiated a number of work programmes as a result of this programme and evolved services to improve the business experience of dealing with Government.”

The Ministry of Education had discontinued the ‘Learning Design Work’ programme.

It had delivered resources, which are on its curriculum website, such as the Pasifika Early Literacy Project, Pacific bilingual e-books and maths resources and dual-language teaching resources.

“The Ministry is committed to supporting Pacific learners and Pacific languages throughout the education pathway,” the spokesperson said, adding it continued to invest in Pacific students.

In December, the Māori language in education initiative Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori was discontinued and reinvested in the Make it Count maths action plan.

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage’s Stacey Richardson said it constantly reviews and prioritises its work programme “based on a range of factors including context, resourcing, Government priorities and funding”.

The Department of Corrections said no major work programmes or projects had been put on hold.

Meanwhile Inland Revenue increased compliance work “in line with the extra funding given to us in last year’s budget”, a spokesperson said.