National breaking promises already

• Steve Pierson
• 16 years ago
• Categories: election 2008, national, slippery
• Tags: election promises, public service

As you know, National promised to cap core public servant numbers at 36,000. That was going to deliver each of us a whopping 50 cents a week tax cut. Well, that one single solid policy promise from National is already in serious jeopardy.

Corrections staff make up 6600 plus of the supposed ‘bureaucrats’ of the core public service. National has just announced it would add over 300 to that number by building a new prison (6600 current staff, 20 prisons = 330 per prison). 

Plus, there’s staff that would be needed for the $1.5 billion plan to restore Telecom’s monopoly position on broadband. You would be lucky to get away with fewer than 100 staff for that. They’re also core public service, MED.

Then you’ve got staff for developing and implementing National’s ‘national standards for reading, writing, and maths’, more for their administratively complex Youth Guarantee, more for the boot camps, more for the Victim’s Compensation Fund, and more to design and implement regulation on private competitors for ACC.

National may have already promised to create 1000 more core public service jobs, all the while promising they would cap those numbers. They haven’t identified any existing core public service jobs they would cut.

So, which promise are they going to break?