public services

Categories under public services

Creeping elitism

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, April 21st, 2012 - 19 comments

There was a time when you expected higher standards from the senior ranks of the public service. Now, more and more, they are just like private sector CEOs. Elitists. The standards are slipping. This slap on the wrist for the Building and Housing CEO who manhandled a staffer just shows how pervasive the elitist private sector ‘one law for us, another for them’ mentality has become.

It’s turtles all the way down

Written By: - Date published: 6:14 am, April 19th, 2012 - 8 comments

Anyone else see the irony in the ‘bureaucracy-slashing National Government‘TM reacting to delays in the Christchurch rebuilding – partly caused by lack of coordination between the local bureaucracy, the existing central government bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy National created especially to deal with the rebuild – by adding another layer of back-room bureaucracy?

Consultancy blowout

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, April 12th, 2012 - 34 comments

In opposition the Nats were critical of Labour’s spending on consultants. Thanks to Keith Ng we now have some figures on sending under the Nat government. Guess what…

Hidden away

Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, April 11th, 2012 - 27 comments

Hidden away at the end of this story, hidden away out of most media view, hidden away from Housing New Zealand, and from society… ordinary people being shafted by National’s cuts.

Juking the stats

Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, March 16th, 2012 - 12 comments

There’s some odd omissions from Key’s new ’10 targets’. There’s nothing hard. Nothing about closing the gap with Australia, formerly goal number 1. Nothing about creating jobs, despite 170,000 being promised. Nothing about the cycleway that was going to end the recession. It invites a closer look at the 10 targets. And then you discover, they’ll all happen anyway.

Key’s laundry list of broken promises

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 pm, March 14th, 2012 - 57 comments

He must resign. Surely. Here is Key, speaking to the PSA in 2008, making very specific promises about public service jobs, tax cuts, and asset sales that helped him get elected. Promises he has since broken. There’s no excuse. He wasn’t blind-sided by events. He made these promises never intending to keep them. Key is refusing to comment but if the man has any ethics he’ll resign.

‘Perks’?

Written By: - Date published: 7:50 am, March 13th, 2012 - 14 comments

It’s easy to attack the extra remuneration that diplomats get while on posting as ‘perks’ that can be cut. But they serve an important purpose. Diplomats and their families have to up-root their whole lives to go on posting. For diplomats’ partners, that usually means giving up their work and income. If there’s no compensation for that, then diplomats won’t be able to go.

List contest: Coping with redundancy stress

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, March 8th, 2012 - 43 comments

The $340K contractors hired to show our diplomats the door have told them that, to cope with stress, they could pray, take a bath, or get a cat. What else do you think was on the list?:

  • Suggestion 4: Whistle while you don’t work…
  • Suggestion 12: Watch The Life of Brian. Sing along to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life…
  • Suggestion 18: For the love of God, stop leaking to Phil Goff

Every time they cut, remember the tax cuts

Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, March 7th, 2012 - 53 comments

Police numbers are going to be slashed. Diplomats too. And nurses. All up, 2,500 jobs gone so far for $20m saved. And it turns out more than half the government’s new doctors don’t exist. Big public sector strikes may be coming. Every time you read this stuff, remember National’s tax cuts for the rich. The $1.1b for ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts last round alone. That’s where the money went.

All in the family

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, February 26th, 2012 - 91 comments

A couple of months after Hekia Parata was promoted to Education Minister, her sister has been promoted to a very senior position in the Ministry of Education. It seems a lot of the Parata clan are experiencing good fortune lately – her husband got a sweet gig ‘explaining’ asset sales to iwi, and several relatives got jobs in her ministerial office.

Life in the front lines

Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, February 23rd, 2012 - 33 comments

Hey remember how the Nats weren’t going to cut frontline staff? How’s that working out?

IT isn’t free

Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, February 17th, 2012 - 172 comments

The Nats want to replace public service jobs with computerised systems. They claim that this will improve service and save money. Quite apart from the folly of destroying jobs in the current economy, they are likely wrong on both those claims.

Treasury advocates own disbandment

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, February 2nd, 2012 - 100 comments

Treasury has blown the dust off its 1980s economics textbooks and offered the same old failed prescription. Their moronic suggestion to cut education spending to finance tax cuts can be dismissed out of hand. But their suggestion of core Crown spending cuts has some merit; I know where we can get $75m that’s being spent on useless advice and incompetent forecasting.

Setting up business: we’re prize winners

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, January 18th, 2012 - 35 comments

Yesterday I officially set myself up in business.  As a GST registered independent contractor. It took about half an hour. Both IRD and ACC’s websites were easy to navigate and understand. I do admit I got a little befuddled trying to figure out the correct ACC classification for what I do (enthusiastic nagging, recruitment and communications at […]

National’s Spending Cap Bill

Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, December 6th, 2011 - 11 comments

National will pass a Spending Cap Bill, under the cover of its Confidence and Supply deal with John Banks. The question isn’t if this Bill is a farcical idea that would hurt NZ if ever enforced (which it wouldn’t be) – even the arch-neoliberals in Treasury oppose it. The question is why National has no better ideas for Parliament’s precious time.

Do the maths on massive public service cuts

Written By: - Date published: 2:36 pm, November 15th, 2011 - 37 comments

We finally get a glimpse of just how ‘small’ the government thinks small government should be. From the Sunday Star Times: It has slashed new spending provisions and put the public service on a belt-tightening programme for which, English warns, there is no end in sight.  The public services, he says, is only about a […]

Remember

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, September 16th, 2011 - 59 comments

When the Nats say they must cut early childhood education funding – remember their new $500m subsidy to polluters.
When the Nats say they have to cut women’s refuge money – remember their new $500m subsidy to polluters.
When the Nats say they have to sell our assets to pay their debt – remember their new $500m subsidy to polluters.

NRT: John Key’s New Zealand

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 9th, 2011 - 72 comments

I/S at NoRightTurn on the Gisborne mother and baby who were turned away by three government agencies when she sought help: “People who go to WINZ needing help should get it. Instead, this woman was told to fuck off, thanks to service cuts and a deliberate policy of limiting costs by imposing bureaucratic barriers to access.”

Human face of public service cuts

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, August 30th, 2011 - 41 comments

Good human interest story in the DomPost today about the human costs of public service jobs cuts. A Wellington woman has written a letter to Prime Minister John after her 63-year-old mother learned last week that her position at the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry is to be axed. Staffing cuts after a merger with the Fisheries […]

What we owe policy wonks

Written By: - Date published: 1:35 pm, August 26th, 2011 - 21 comments

Yesterday William commented to Cuts and Consequences to the effect that who needs policy analyst and that big private companies don’t bother with them and so neither should government. I’m paraphrasing a little bit but it did strike me that many people (including it seems some very senior ministers in this government – but not – funnily enough […]

Cuts and consequences

Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, August 25th, 2011 - 23 comments

The government reckons it can cut the number of public sector workers without cutting services. That wasn’t the experience of the 80s and 90s when vital institutional knowledge and expertise were lost in a frenzy of asset sales,  privatisation and brutal job cuts– when public service numbers dropped from around 85,000 public servants  to under  30,000 […]

Cuts for you, tax cuts for Brash

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, August 11th, 2011 - 56 comments

ACT’s Spending Cap Bill is coming to Parliament. It would cap government spending and only let it grow each year by inflation and population growth. At first blush, and assuming that you don’t want the government to do anything it doesn’t do now, this might seem like a way to maintain current services without adding more. But reality ain’t that simple.

Salt in the wound

Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 30th, 2011 - 81 comments

Two years ago, this government sparked the biggest protests in a generation when it tried to open up the most precious parts of our conservation estate to mining. The policy got canned but the agenda has continued below the surface. Now, 100 DoC staff have been sacked while the MED unit for oil drilling and mining will nearly double its staff.

Rearranging the deck chairs

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, June 1st, 2011 - 41 comments

Renaming, merging and splitting agencies is what a government does when it wants to look busy but has no ideas.

Hard to believe it has only taken two and a half years for National to get to this point.

Plurality support quake levy

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, April 4th, 2011 - 4 comments

A UMR poll shows that 40% of Kiwis support paying an earthquake levy to help pay for the Christchurch rebuild. 22% prefer more borrowing, and 29% want spending cuts. Asked just whether they supported or opposed a levy – 57% supported it. Yet the Nats are choosing cuts instead.

Economy

Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, April 3rd, 2011 - 84 comments

The economy, shall we say politely, is facing some difficulties. With a National government there was no plan as to how to weather the economic storm, we just got tax cuts for the rich and an economy that just can’t get growing.

Choices, choices

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, April 1st, 2011 - 21 comments

In the last Budget, National cut the corporate tax rate to 28%, which costs $400 million a year and comes into effect today. It also cut $200 million a year from early childhood education and tertiary funding in the same Budget, while borrowing billions. When the government cuts public services it is because it chooses […]

Cuts don’t make costs disappear

Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, March 30th, 2011 - 62 comments

Key and English are trying to soften us up for big public service cuts this budget. They tell us it’ll just be ‘nice to haves’ and that the private sector will step in to fill the gap when they cut too close to the bone. The important thing to realise is that every time the public service doesn’t provide us with something either we have to buy it out of our own pockets (usually at greater cost) or we don’t get it at all.

‘Crisis’ but tax cuts for the rich keep coming

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, March 23rd, 2011 - 43 comments

The Nats want us to believe there is no other option than massive cuts to government spending. Roughly, a third of the cuts covers the earthquake rebuilding, another third covers the Nats’ tax cuts for the rich, and the last third covers the revenue loss from this neverending recession. So, how come the Nats can afford another round of tax cuts for the rich?

Slash and burn, Key’s choice

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 pm, March 21st, 2011 - 96 comments

John Key says there’ll be no new money in the Budget. The health, education, and other locked-in increases  plus the Christchurch rebuild will come from cuts elsewhere. Cuts of up to 32%. It doesn’t have to be that way. The rebuild and the shortfall can be easily covered if Key wanted to. If he chooses to slash and burn, it’s because he wants to.

Cuts! Cuts! Cuts!

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, March 21st, 2011 - 42 comments

There was already going to be too little money in Budget 2011 for maintenance of public services. Now what little there was is being further slashed in the name of Christchurch. An Earthquake Levy is not an option, rather we’ll all pay through increased borrowing and 25% cuts in services like police, transport, justice and social services.