Nicola Willis has unveiled her audacious plan for the public service, but the real test is to come
Thursday, 21 May 2026
Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party.
OPINION: Audacity in politics is sometimes associated with daring boldness but, equally, the term can apply to an arrogance, a disregard.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis managed to achieve the former this week with her plans to not only streamline government agencies while unleashing the power of AI, but also to place a target of 8700 fewer public service jobs and then to bank those savings in the Budget before they’ve been achieved.
At least, with projected savings of $2.4 billion - $597 million over four years - we now know where the $2.2b in extra capital spending is coming from.
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Politically, the ramifications for National in taking a pick-axe to public servants is less hazardous than last year’s $12.8b pay equity slam-dunk. While pay equity’s nurses and teachers might have once been persuaded to vote Team Blue, social workers, prison officers and policy wonks now facing the chop will be much less likely to do so.
Core National voters – the around 30% presently sticking with them in the polls – will be cheering, too.
The bigger question is that in having outlined its plan to restructure and downsize the state sector, then paid it forward and created these targets, is National putting a bullseye on its own back?
Because, while slashing public service numbers has been core National policy since before the last election going back to the Bill English years, the party’s efforts to achieve that to date have hardly been successful.
Yes, savings of $1.5 billion were achieved in the coalition’s first year, but full-time jobs decreased by only 2731 between December 2023 and 2024 leaving 62,968 full-time positions intact.
A year later that number had grown by 689 to 63, 657 when National was in power and talking big about creating a smaller state sector.
Willis is right when she says that Aotearoa has far too many public service agencies. It’s embarrassing that we have 39 departments and ministries when comparable populations, such as Finland, only have around 12.
But how the finance minister intends to achieve that isn’t exactly clear, except that, in true National fashion, a list of civil service “haves” and “have-nots” has been established, between those who have been saved from cost-cutting and number crunching and the 26 agencies facing diminution or possibly, annihilation.
The former group numbers 13 and includes Police, the Defence Force, Oranga Tamariki and Crown Law, while the unlucky latter include the Ministry of Social Development, MBIE, Treasury and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
In her speech, Willis suggested these agencies should merge, citing the creation of the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport, dubbed M-CERT, as an example of what’s possible.
National is already experienced in creating this kind of efficiency. Under the redoubtable Steven Joyce, in 2012 it pulled together the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). By 2024 its numbers had swollen to 6400 and its expenditure had grown 90% in seven years.
A 2024 pre-Budget independent rapid review of the ministry, by former Ministry of Social Development CEO Brendan Boyle, found that its broadening scope had come at a cost and the Government needed to “agree what role it wants MBIE to play”.
These sentiments are already being expressed with M-CERT.
Simon Upton, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, told a select committee the merger to a mega-ministry, which he called a “big blender”, would be unlikely to help the environment.
He’s concerned that bulk funding means trade-offs are made behind closed doors instead of in a “contested, public arena, with ministers making the decisions”.
It’s easy to forget that Tuesday’s announcement was arguably the most significant change to how the public service operates in several generations. Not only will 8700 jobs go, with an effective cap of 55,000 put on its numbers, but departmental spending will be cut by 2% this year and 5% for the following two years.
Slashing 12% off departmental budgets over the next three years is the antithesis of what Labour would do, as we’ll hear repeatedly between now and the election.
And while this policy will undoubtedly be a winner in National’s heartland, there are downsides to enacting it now. National was dealing well with a fuel crisis that wasn’t of its making but because of “decisions being made in the White House”, as Willis says.
Now, the six years of economic pain that voters are still labouring through will be exacerbated even more for the thousands about to lose their livelihoods, and the culprits who caused that pain will be National – and Nicola Willis.
If the realignment of a country’s state services wasn’t a bold undertaking, it has been made even bolder with the addition of targets and a savings attached to it.
Which is where audacity can slide from daring to recklessness.
Because if the targets aren’t reached, the savings can’t be banked.
The real audacity comes in executing the plan.