This is how many public service roles have actually been cut

Friday, 12 September 2025

New Zealand’s Public Sector has disestablished about 4000 roles and created at least 2000 in the last year, The Post has found, with ministries, departments and agenciessplashing millions on consultants to carry out restructures.

The Post asked 70 departments, the executive branch (NZDF, police and the Parliamentary Counsel Office) and Crown entities how many jobs had been cut and how many had been created between July 2024 and July 2025.

This was to show how many roles ‒ including those that had been left vacant ‒ each organisation had changed by.

From the organisations that responded, 4120 roles had been disestablished and 2018 had been created.

Of the organisations that The Post went to, 50 had restructured, 10 had not restructured, and 10 either extended the time to reply or had not yet replied. Those that had extended included large organisations such as Corrections, police, Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Ministry of Education (MoE).

Using Public Service Commission workforce data ‒ which had a different time period comparison (between June 2024 and March 2025) and did not differentiate how many roles specifically had been disestablished, created or if they were fixed-term or contract positions ‒ it showed there had been a small dip of 325 full time equivalent positions between organisations that had not responded yet, and a sizeable increase by Health NZ by 1170 and police by 225.

The NZDF had not concluded its restructure so was not able to provide the number of roles cut or created, but did say 148 staff had accepted voluntary redundancy.

Public Service Association national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the figures “are real people who had more to give New Zealand”.

“The inclusion of vacant roles is important as this shows the reduction in the capacity of the public sector. We needed this capacity to solve complex problems facing New Zealand like climate change adaptation, our ageing population and infrastructure deficit.”

ACT public service spokesperson Todd Stephenson said when Government spends less, “that leaves more money in the pockets of families to deal with the cost of living”.

“The sad reality is that under Labour the public service ballooned by around 15,000 extra staff, yet New Zealanders are no better off for it. That growth was unsustainable, which is why reductions have been necessary since the change of government.

“The trend is heading in the right direction, but ACT will keep pushing for change to happen further and faster.'

Kāinga Ora had 11 targeted restructures initiated before July 28, 2024 and completed within the time period. Two more targeted restructures were initiated and completed during that time, and one organisation-wide was initiated and completed.

Across those restructures a total of 1717 roles were disestablished and 559 new positions established.

Of those who restructured, 28 used consultants in relation to the restructure. Overall that came to a price tag for the taxpayer of more than $5 million.

Inland Revenue had six restructures during that time and spent more than $1m on consultants for restructures.

At Te Tari Whakatau - The Office of Treaty Settlements, previously named Te Arawhiti, there were two restructures ‒ the first was stopped “when Cabinet took decisions to transfer some functions to Te Puni Kōkiri”, an official document said.

For both, Te Arawhiti used consultant firms, Deloitte and Momentum Consulting. In total, it cost $668,000.

Asked if it would make sense to hire restructure experts within the public service, Acting Prime Minister David Seymour said “there'll always be an argument, should you get people to do the job in-house and take on all the costs of employing them permanently, or should you get someone in to quickly do a job which will actually be costing less money?

“Particularly when you're trying to reduce the massive bloat in the bureaucracy that happened under Labour, it'd kind of be ironic to hire more full time people to try and reduce the size of the bureaucracy.”

On using the consultants, Seymour said, “the problem is our labour laws are too complicated, and that's why [Workplace Relations Minister] Brooke van Velden is simplifying them.

“The fact is that people right across New Zealand, small businesses, big businesses and government agencies have real trouble restructuring and trying to move people on when actually they're no longer contributing to the organisation.

“That's a cost that everybody pays.”

Green Party public service spokesperson Francisco Hernandez said it was “deeply ironic that a Government that has bragged about cutting consultant spending has racked up mega bills to degrade public service capacity”.

In June, latest March quarterly public service data, which does not include crown agencies, saw a small increase of 269 full time equivalent roles (FTE) compared with December 2024. The December quarterly data had dropped in its annual change, down 4.2% by 2731.