Judith Collins on merging the public service

Tuesday, 30 September 2025

“Big bang” overhauls aren’t on the Public Service Minister’s agenda.

Instead, Judith Collins is eyeing combining back rooms similar to that of the GCSB and NZSIS, while at the same time a mega merger between Environment, Housing and Transport ministries is looking more likely.

The Post in August revealed a major reshape of the public service could be on the cards, with potential for a significant consolidation of departments, ministries and departmental agencies.

In an interview with The Post, Collins said before any mergers were to happen, “it's very important to understand what it is that you want to change, what's the result that you want to get, and why is it you can't get it now”.

“You've really got to make sure that there's a very good argument for it, otherwise - leave well alone.”

On combining back office functions, Collins said the GCSB and NZSIS which has merged back office areas but are still two separate entities, “work extremely well”.

“It keeps their administrative costs down as well. You don't actually have to merge… the agencies, but what you can do is you can have shared services.”

Collins is also moving to overhaul and centralise Government tech procurement, with estimated savings of $3.9 billion of the $13b in projected technology costs over the coming five years.

'Quite a big chunk of the budgets for some of these smaller agencies goes in administration matters, there could be some sense in pooling those resources, but… they're quite small numbers compared to some of the big issues that we've got to deal with.”

Collins said that the “biggest one at the moment, which makes a lot of sense, is looking to the urban development and housing and RMA work that Chris Bishop is doing”.

That’s a nod to the triple merger under consideration between the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Ministry for the Environment - each which deal heavily with the Resource Management Act.

Collins asked if there was a way to minimise agencies going “off on their own little tangents and do their own work without thinking about… what's the big plan here?”

Collins confirmed there was more work happening in that space, but it was in preliminary form and still needed to be costed and go through Cabinet.

“There's some more work going on there, but it's all very preliminary, and any changes would need to be fully thought out, costed and obviously go through Cabinet and the usual processes.”

She was “not a fan of just merging for the sake of it”.

“I do think it's very important to understand, what jobs wouldn't people be doing? What activities wouldn't be needed? What arrangements could be made so that there is a better synergy?”

Collins reiterated that any potential changes were still at a preliminary stage.

“We're only looking at things at the moment.”