When the bureaucracy becomes the elite

Sunday, 30 November 2025

The scandal engulfing Police National Headquarters in Wellington raises bigger questions about public service bosses, writes Auckland mayor Wayne Brown

Wayne Brown is the mayor of Auckland

Opinion: The whole country has been shocked by the recent Police scandal but many have missed that it is symptomatic of a bigger malaise, not just the number of senior Police involved but the huge pay cheques they are getting and their ability to flit from appointment to appointment in the various branches of government.

Andrew Coster leaves the high salary, free uniforms, transport and other Police advantages for an equally well-paid position heading a social investment department that in itself doesn’t even justify its existence.

There is a huge overpaid management class in Wellington who move from one department to another with no particular skills associated with the new department.

The last CEO of NZ Transport Agency stepped in from WorkSafe, and there’s no sign of any link between those two. NZTA is one of our largest wasters of money, squandering huge sums on roads that should have been millions cheaper and should be led by deeply experienced roading people. (Apparently the latest leader has skills in this field.)

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown: Why are unelected public service bosses paid more than the mayor of New Zealand’s biggest city?

This is a country in financial trouble heading towards a debt cliff so big that Treasury has not only noticed it but is now warning central government about it, yet we taxpayers fund a huge number of grossly overpaid civil servants.

I sit in meetings with the CEO of KiwiRail, a reasonable bloke being paid $1.8 million, a sum six times higher than the mayor of our only big city, yet I’m pretty sure his inputs are no more valuable than mine.

The Local Government Commission (one of hundreds of unnecessary commissions) determines that the Auckland Mayor should be paid around $300k and that is fine by me for what is probably the second toughest elected position behind the PM.

So how does the Higher Salaries Commission come up with the ludicrous salaries for civil servants who wouldn’t come within cooee of such sums if pushed out to earn their income in the private sector?

Central government (and to a lesser extent local government) costs our country way too much. Efforts to cut these costs inevitably lead to cuts of staff in the lower-paid categories, the ones who clean the streets, drive the buses and do stuff that needs to be done while the management class carry on.

The Police scandal shows that this needs to change now!

How is this for a policy?

No person being paid for by either taxpayers or ratepayers should earn more than the mayors of our biggest cities!

This would save billions and no services would be cut.

I have no problem with private capital paying whatever they can - but not for publicly funded employees.

The management class would be in uproar, senior administrators, judges and so on would threaten to march off the job. Where to in a weak economy? Nowhere of course and there are plenty who would step up to an income in the upper $200k to replace them.

Now that is a serious response to the mega salaries of our publicly funded employees.

At my council there are platoons of staff earning more than the mayor - who in my case is certainly making a difference - so let’s see if any of our major political parties pick this up because sooner or later a government will have to seriously cut costs as well as raising more cash from the rest of us.

More ideas on that side coming up but we need to Fix New Zealand now.

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