The growing bureaucracy
John Key’s speech on the bureaucracy yesterday is here. Some key points:
- Labour has had education bureaucrats grow in number by 40% compared to 12% growth of teacher numbers
- Central Health bureaucrats up 51% while medical professionals up 28%
- MSD policy staff have increased 109% while MSD service staff only 23%
- Overall an increase in bureaucrats by 37%, and 1 in 50 employees in NZ is now a bureaucrat
- Salary costs for policy departments have increased 142%
- Government Administration has been the fastest growing sector of the economy
Key also made these pledges:
- No reduction in front-line staff. The numbers of doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, police and other front-line staff will grow.
- In the first term of a National government no growth in the size of the core bureaucracy.
- $500 million estimated savings over three years
John Armstrong comments:
The freeze, however, is archetypal Key. It will strike a chord outside Wellington. But it is a moderate policy, rather than a radical initiative, and consequently much more difficult for Labour to criticise.
It left Labour torn between wanting to say the policy was too weak to be effective yet strong enough to force cutbacks in services.
He also comments on the PM’s bizarre attempts to suggest National will not hold costs, because Christine Rankin is rumoured to be seeking a candidacy:
The Prime Minister’s response was to raise the spectre of Rankin past followed by mention of Rankin present.
She noted Rankin was a National Party member and hinted the Auckland regional councillor might even be in the running to make it on to National’s candidate list. …
Yesterday’s attempted haymaker from Clark was so off target it risked knocking her out instead.
I hope National will keep a focus on the state sector. Personally I would push for them to be more adventurous – not in terms of the number of public servants, but in the area of structural reform. A recent remuneration survey not only discovered public sector CEOs are paid more than private sector ones, but that there are around 210 of them.
I would be keen to see what sort of savings one could make with a rationalisation so there are not 210 CEOs, 210 payroll systems, 210 IT systems, 210 HR systems. I’m not proposing that the functions performed by those agencies be dispensed with, but that amalgamations could result in not just cost savings, but enhanced performance. I’ll blog more one day in detail on this.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
The big problem I have with the public service is that all the various reforms to date have resulted in a massive duplication of effort. The DHB’s represent an example of this. Why does every DHB need to run seperate information technology systems and all the cost that they involve? And when they try get their systems to talk to each other – well, the result is yet more interfaces required because they have to retain their own systems.
If there was a concrete plan (something more than just a theory) to put the provision of public services on a more efficient basis, it would win my vote straight away.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Yes John is on the right track here. If the private sector can make do with what they have got I am sure the Government can do too.
http://nzdebate.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-need-for-more-bureaucrats.html
March 13th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Why all the policy analysts do you think? One agency I worked with went from around 4 policy analysts to around 25 in the space of a year.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Nice use of percentages by Slippery John Key. Shame he didn’t put some numbers to those percents.
Another John Key special all piss no wind.
[DPF: Yes it is a well known statistical trick to use percentage increases. No reputable person in statistics will ever use percentages]
March 13th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Dear John Dulley ( slippery commie eel);
I am so pleased that National has seen the damage inflicted by the huge handbrake, which is the bureaucratic inertia that pushes and maintains people sympathetic to Labour in many unfit and meaningless positions. The pitfalls of big bureaucracy are detrimental to the well being of society. Behind the scenes office niche pen pushers are not as effective as front line coalface service workers tackling an increasingly problematic society. In the kiwi hierarchically structured administrations, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence. Most commissions and quangos are pointless and filled to the brim with Labour cronies. A classic example is the sad indictment, which is our dysfunctional justice system characterised by pious liberal judges who are oblivious to common sense, which sees many victims of injustice tossed aside worthless as non-identities who are struggling for survival.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Clark’s references to Christine Rankin were truly bizarre.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I’m not happy with the Armstrong column…. he uses my name in vain
March 13th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
A bizarre defence, yes. But… Christine Rankin?! Given the rigours of the candidates selection process outlined by DPF yesterday it’ll be no accident if she ends up on the ticket. It’s to be hoped someone with some authority will take her aside and quietly ask that she refrain from causing embarrassment by applying, or else the media and Labour will – justifiably – have a field day. Then again, apparently HO can reject unsuitable candidates at the outset so she may fall at the first hurdle.
D4J – your comment nails it. I’m glad to see even someone as kicked around by bureaucracy as yourself can see that it’s usually not the poor sods at the front desk who’re responsible for the heartlessness and inefficiency of their employers but the highly paid back room “executives” who remain well insulated from the realities of implementing their decisions. Part of my job used to be taking young workskills trainees down to WINZ (or whatever the hell stupid acronym it was in those days) and I felt nothing but empathy for those people who’d always do their best to help but had to consult volumes of rules and regulations, most of which said “Thou shalt not…” The really effective ones used to break the rules. Inevitably the people they helped did well. But then the worker would get caught and “transferred”, to be replaced by someone who’d had it drummed into them that the rules (concocted by some airhead like Rankin) must never be broken.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
John – Another John Key special all piss no wind I think you mean it the other way round, or something else entirely, you half-brained one-eyed plonker
March 13th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Why not set up a Ministry of Administrative Affairs – then we’ll be all the way to “yes minister”
The public service is so big now it’s exactly what we need, an administration to administer the administrators of bureaucracy.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
The other night I got a call from UMR Research on behalf of the Families Commission. They were doing a survey of “how people allocate their time”. I politely told the pollster to tell the Commission to mind their own business and that I considered they were a waste of space and taxpayers money. I then proceeded to fume for half an hour which fair spoilt my dinner.
Key needs to come up with similar examples of obvious waste and keep repeating them.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
The exploding bureaucracy.
This is one of the key (sorry!) reasons why I (a lifelong Labour voter and former bureaucrat) will not be voting Labour.
It’s not only a question of numbers either. Look at the sort of ‘work’ they do!
March 13th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I’ve seen some indication that the push back against Key’s proposal is that there’s only an extra 10,000 bureaucrats over 9 years. However, this ignores the likelihood they are very productive indeed.. at slowing down progress. The more efficient and productive they are, the more they act as a brake on the people at the sharp end.
I wouldn’t underestimate those extra desk jockeys. They are likely very bright and hard working at reducing risk to their political masters.. and stifling the energy of the doers.
JC
March 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Look DPF, this is one of the FUNDAMENTAL REASONS that contracting something out to private enterprise will be so much cheaper. Private enterprise, for all the slogans of the Left, does NOT create the sort of feeding trough for overpaid supernumaries that the public sector does. This should NOW be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain, if it wasn’t before…..
March 13th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Kiwi toffee with such a great name I’m guessing you are in mourning today too.
But madDad4J and DPF if there is a ballooning bureaucracy and Key said this in his speech,
“Over the past eight years the bureaucracy has grown out of all proportion to those parts of the state sector that actually service the public.”
How does one reconcile this with the fact the Key won’t be trimming the bureaucracy at all, indeed he said “I firmly believe we have enough bureaucrats to do the job“.
And John Dalley is dead right. If I have 1 staff member and hire another, that is a 100% increase. Percentage increases are a poor indicator of numbers.
For instance: “education bureaucrats grow in number by 40% compared to 12% growth of teacher numbers”.
So the education bureaucrats one would suggest are there to administer NCEA. Are these full time education bureaucrats or are they like some of my teaching colleagues who work for the ministry as advisors etc. Also teaching numbers are more or less tied to the school populations, if we were to see a 40% increase of teachers, we’d be starting to get the teacher – student ratios that would be inspirational and world class.
But once again, the 40% increase was from what to what? Percentage statistics was the inspiration for the old catchphrase of Lies – damned lies – and statistics.
But one more time for all of those unable to take in simple Key speak.
The bureaucrats will not be reduced in numbers by National. So the speech by Key was about what. The bureaucracy is too big but we won’t do a thing about it. Great claytons speech mate, and you folk are buying it hook line and sinker.
This is just a case of saying something to get over the “I said, no i didn’t say, that is I will say something different by this evening” week that Key has had, or why else would he be pointing out something supposedly bad but not going to do anything about it except not increase it. Christ I hope we don’t get a claytons govt out of these people.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Has Labour done away with economies of scale?
Surely if frontline staff increases by 12%, you dont need an increase in support staff to increase by 40%.
For those numbertards, well you can put in any number you like.
10000 frontline staff to begin will increase to 11200.
100 support staff to begin with will increase to 140.
Sooooo…. instead of each support staffer looking after 100 frontline staff they are now only looking after 80. So did they get 20% LESS efficient?
March 13th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Dad the Justice System is not part of the bureaucracy, it’s part of the Justice System. But apart from that obvious blunder…
And thank christ the justice system doesn’t run on common sense, because it would be a mess. If they were to determine cases on my common sense then things would run smoothly, however if things were to run on your common sense, we’d have witch hunts the length and breadth of the country.
As you can see from this, common sense has never been the at the corner stone of the judicial process, because how do we define common sense. Back when you were growing up, putting a leech under one’s tongue was a way to alleviate all manner of illnesses, however since we have moved on from that, common sense determines that we don’t use a leech on the tongue for anything other than a good time. Common sense is also not common sense. My cousins central otago view of race relations common sense, is to delete the word Maori from the language and we’d all be Kiwi’s. Not one single tentative grasp of common and even less grasp of sense or reality.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
“How does one reconcile this with the fact the Key won’t be trimming the bureaucracy at all…”
Ummm, he will slow the growth to zero so eventually the increase in frontline staff will bring the bureaucracy back into proportion.
Fuck and hell, Paul, it is just far too easy to destroy your argument.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Oh goodie someone else arguing against the evil that is percentages. I look forward to your consistent advocacy against them.
And Paul seems disappointed that Key has not allowed the PSA to run a scare campaign about National slashing jobs.
Holding the numbers of bureaucrats level, will see their proportion at a total of all public sector jobs and their proportion as a total of all jobs decline. If the economy grows 10% in three years and the bureaucracy does not grow at all, that is a useful achievement.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Kimble. but if there were 3 support staff and now there are 5 that is a huge percentage increase, but in numbers it’s small.
Once again percentages are a about as usefull as a descriptive tool as describing the colour mauve to the blind. And to add to that Kimble the small thing of NCEA introduced in that period.
What were the actual numbers and what are they now, 40% more than what, 1,23, 3987 what???
Pluse as Johnny number boy himself said, not one person will be lost, he’s comfortable with the level of bureaucrats! What is this about, he’s not going to change one thing? This is worse than hot air, he’s talking about what he’s not going to do.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Paul, dont be dense, your argument has been destroyed.
More people doing less of the work each = lower efficiency.
It doesnt matter how many there are.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
“This is worse than hot air, he’s talking about what he’s not going to do.”
Yeah, he is saying he WONT slash jobs in Wellington. What a prick.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Yes but David, this is about Key apparently happy with the numbers, while all here seem unhappy with them. Come on he’s your boy, if he’s comfortable with the numbers why aren’t you lot.
Hang on one second Kimble. If the numbers in the state bureaucracy is too high (re Key’s speech), why doesn’t he trim from next year. No one’s job should be secure if they are part of a quango that isn’t doing anything common sense.
This isn’t about the numbers either, Its about Key making a claytons speech with claytons policy. The numbers are too high but we won’t reduce them, we’ll just let attrition deal to them. Pathetic.
David percentage analysis has it’s place, but in this case a 40% increase from what to what and are their jobs justified. Is this down to NCEA or is it down to the amount of people making sure the likes of a bureaucratic version of Dad4J aren’t editing wikipediea?
40% of the sound of one hand clapping is about as usefull here as it is talking about numbers. Sorry David and this is the simple truth.
[DPF: Nothing is more glorious a sound than a leftie unhappy that John Key has produced a policy which can not be easily attacked. When you get the fake insincere calls demanding that he insist on cutting jobs, you know he has done very well. And when they don't even realise the full speech had the raw numbers on the 37% increase, well even better]
March 13th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Kimble, how do you know they are doing less work each, you have the figures in front of you or are you just yelling at the lefties again with little or no argument to back it up.
Don’t call Key a prick, that’s our job.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
“Kimble, how do you know they are doing less work each,”
There has been a huge increase in them servicing a relatively small increase in the people actually doing the work.
That is enough of an argument. You have done nothing to counter it except flat out denial.
“this is about Key apparently happy with the numbers,”
HAHAHAHHAHAHA! Give up Paul, you are embarassing yourself.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I don’t know what the ideal size for the public sector is or how we compare to other countries so I can’t flat out say that John Key’s idea is a bad one. He deserves some kudos for realising that the public simply do not want radical cuts to the public sector and for moderating National’s earlier policies. Of course a cap is still effectively a cut in the sense that as costs rise each year the government will get less and less bang for its buck and the public will get a less and less effective public service as a result of it. This sort of “death by a thousand cuts” already happens now under Labour in some areas and the public is largely oblivious to it.
The fact is though that the public sector was gutted by successive governments from 1984 to 1999 until Labour got in and turned things around – with a fairly solid mandate from voters to do it I might add. Of course there are going to have been significant changes in staff levels and budgets as a result.
That said, there are savings that could be made. DPF’s suggestion of rationalising IT, HR etc across the 210 different agencies is a good one. Lets cut the number of agencies while we are at it. At the very least they could amalgamate a few DHBs. My local one is practically amalgamated with its larger neighbour anyway with a lot of shared services and governance and is basically a waste of space. National should get rid of the sham of “democratically elected” health boards also…perhaps Cunliffe was showing the way there.
Aside from that there are 9 years of minister’s pointless pet projects or projects that have been created to guaranteee the support of minor parties to clear up (yes, that means you families commission). National also needs to restore public service neutrality and boot out the current government’s cronies or at least those who haven’t had the sense to resign by the time National takes office.
Its not necessarily the size of the public sector that is the problem, the biggest source of waste is that there has always been a culture in the public sector that you spend every dollar you are allocated or otherwise your budget gets cut the following year. As an example, in one public sector job I had a performance based part of my contract that required me to spend my modest budget plus or minus 10%. There was no similar clause to control the _quality_ of the spending it was all about getting the money spent and being a performance measure it could have affected my already meagre pay if I screwed it up. While there were systems in place to stop corruption or stupid things like spending all your money on food, booze or $5 hookers or something, what tended to happen was that you spent all of your money in the last month of the financial year on things that weren’t necessarily high priority or were extra bells and whistles that we could kind of justify but not really.
Even if you did your best to spend your money wisely (i.e. being mindful that it wasn’t yours but was actually the taxpayer’s) somebody else would end up spending your excess budget in exactly the same way. Now the amount I was responsible for was pocket change in the grand sceheme of things but imagine that situation magnified and multiplied across the whole of the public sector and you end up with quite a lot of waste. Thats the bit that needs fixing.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
within five years the ministry of ed has grown from 500 staffers to 2453 last time i looked (late 2007) PLUS the weird new institute called the TEC was formed in 2005 not included in that increase. Again last time i looked (same time) approximately 500 staff at the TEC, of which approx 100 on 100k+.
I doubt that these numbers have shrunk in the 3 to 4 months since these figures were available. What do they do?
Health: no need to go there
Sh#t I wasn’t having the best day due to dealing with some of these people but thinking about it just makes a bad day worse. I wish I had some of those lefty rose tinted glasses……
March 13th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Southtop – thats okay because with a 5 fold increase in the number of Ministry of Ed staff the kids will be getting 5 times smarter. They’ll be tagging the complete works of Shakespeare on bus shelters before we know it.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Paul: Er, yes but only a bit.
I don’t have a problem losing to a better team. (Heaven knows I’ve got used to it over the years.)
I hope Ms. Clark takes the same view.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Southtop
thanks for the numbers, something Key wasn’t willing to reveal.
So in that time at the ministry of Ed, how many initiatives have been introduced like NCEA that are good for education that can’t be run by teachers?
The TEC is relatively worthwhile. It would be very hard to argue against the efficiencies that they are starting to achieve in the university environment. For a change Uni’s and polytechs aren’t competing for the same students. Like at Otago, the Teachers College has been absorbed into the University, they aren’t competing for the same thing. PBRF is about increasing and justifying research monies.
Kimble please stop making yourself look like a pompous ass, it’s very unbecoming. YOU KNOW FOR A FACT THAT MORE PEOPLE ARE DOING LESS WORK?
If you know this for a fact, please share these facts with me, otherwise shut up. Give me the numbers and the facts and I’ll post a position on that, but your say so doesn’t mean anything.
It’s like trying to rely on Dad4J’ common sense – immeasurable and shifting.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Has anyone had the pleasure of dealing with the policy makers in Wellington?
They definetly have never worked in the commercial meeting.
You have a one way meeting with them, they provide no feedback and getting an answer or some movement within 6 months is unthinkable.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
It’s a first meeting a Blue Blue, I guess the people’s club transcends politics – thank god.
And come on they weren’t the better side, that’s just too magnanimous of you, they were Italian shite and you know it.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Southern Raider are you taking the piss, or is this from personal experience.
I have a friend at a big ministry who was head hunted from the private sector.
Once again, if these people are so bad, why isn’t Key getting rid of some first 100 days in office. Why hasn’t he got people working on a list right now to thin it out.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
This Paul chap is a blue vote catcher sub species. Thank you Paul and do keep on crediting National with more brownie points as your blinded ideologies are irrational and bizarre and must be an extreme embarrassment for a Labour Party struggling in the polls.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I would be keen to see what sort of savings one could make with a rationalisation so there are not 210 CEOs, 210 payroll systems, 210 IT systems, 210 HR systems. I’m not proposing that the functions performed by those agencies be dispensed with, but that amalgamations could result in not just cost savings, but enhanced performance. I’ll blog more one day in detail on this.
Well 840 people to do the job of 210? no wonder unemployment is down!
I pay tax to give these people a job and a living?
You servants of the Govt have a supprise coming
March 13th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Has anyone ever played the game Civilization 4? It has an excellent quote when you research Bureaucracy.
“The Bureaucracy expands, to meet the needs of the ever expanding bureaucracy”
March 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I think one obvious reason that JK is not talking about slashing jobs is that he really can’t. Like any employer the government can’t get rid of a saleried employee without either paying them out or facing a legal challenge. He may actually love to cut down the public service but the only way to do it is through natural attrition.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Paul you need to come out of the dark into the real world. The vast majority are self pretenious paper pushers with a disdain to the corporate world. They don’t have to meet delivery dates, KPI’s etc like the rest of us.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I really hope the Nats select Christine Rankin to an electable list position. Maybe they can even make her National “Spokesperson” for Social Development, since she has such good experience from her time at WINZ.
Having her on the list would demonstrate exactly how they [National] will cut back the public service – less spending on frontline services, and more to fund regional jaunts to Huka Lodge for senior public staffers loyal to National – Erin Leigh for head of WINZ!
Its just a pity Steve Maharey is retiring.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Spector all he needs to do is start putting some expectations of performance on them and the size will gradually decrease as they decide to find something easier like working for a trade union.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Steve
“You servants of the Govt have a supprise coming”
No they haven’t as Key is ‘comfortable’ with the level of the public service – his words not mine.
Southern Raider, and in your dystopian world no one working in the public sector is worth anything. Is your world any more real than mine, or is the blue pill you continue to take cocooning you from the ‘real world’
Christ the ‘real world’ and ‘common sense’ have been thrown about willy nilly here this afternoon/evening.
And what a load of shit about delivery dates. How is it then that the large company that I have employed services of has pushed back it’s delivery date 3 times in the last 6 months.
All of you people have an in depth of the civil service, and it’s workings, and such a shame they are inaccurate.
Still with productivity levels on such a high in the private sector we will all be guided to the economic nirvana of the right -(what productivity is low in the private sector – no how can that be, they are so perfect?).
March 13th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Southern Raider – All departments have performance measures which they have to report on but they don’t produce accountability in the way those in the private sector do…in my experience they are often dreamed up by paper pushers and bear little resemblance to the reality at the coal face. The PSA has always fought tooth and nail to avoid having the work of individual’s being performance based as it is much happier to encourage mediocrity. They are much happier to have people plod along “Gliding On” style than to learn from the private sector and lift the public sector’s game.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Boy the ol karma really takes a beating over those 9th floor issued slurs and talking points eh johnboy.
Latest stats indicate 1 in 50 labour party staffers are now emplyed solely to troll kiwiblog and spam online polls.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
and steve
“I pay tax to give Brian Connell a job and a living? could make you cry eh.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Paul:
I had the pleasure of playing in Italy in 1981 (lucky me). Until that time, I thought I knew how to play. And the results of this week and last didn’t surprise me at all. Fiorentina are one of the under-rated sides of Europe.
I’d like to see them go all the way, as I would John Key.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Am I understanding this. Key says that Labour made a top=heavy bureaucracy that doesn’t deliver the “services” it is is promised to deliver. That the frontline workers are not the focus but the behind the scenes bureaucrats are. And his policy is to keep it exactly as it is by not cutting back the bureaucrats. This is National’s “alternative”.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Murray:
Seems to be a former teacher that is the assigned k-troll today.
Still, its encouraging that he can manage to get the talking points correctly from the CTU “The percentages are misleading”
Anyway Paul, since you seem a little dense, here’s a starter for 10 on your ‘research’
http://www.ssc.govt.nz/display/document.asp?NavID=82&DocID=6254
March 13th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The stats over the last 50 years are instructive. There’s only been one Govt of three years (Lab 1972-75), and one of six years (Lab 1984-90). Ergo, NZers like longer term Govts that take their time in instituting change and turning things around. That means Key doesn’t have to promise things to happen all at once, because NZers neither like that or accept it.
It’s a foolish opposition that promises more than the bare minimum to achieve power, because it knows it has to be agile for 6-9 years once it gets in, so Key is right to promise no more than a halt to the growth in the bureaucracy because there’s plenty of time over the succeeding election cycles to do more.. if it seems appropriate. Who knows, given time the bureaucrat of today might retrain as a teacher or doctor or private sector whizz when the signals are right.
Albeit they sometimes don’t recognise it, the huge advantage that incoming NZ Govts have is time.. time to move quickly on a severely limited number of items without destroying their mandate, and time to move progressively over the longer term on to other projects.
If John Key wants his Govt to last, then he has to start slow, do several major projects well in the first year or two, pick up the pace in the middle term and coast on top in the third, but key to this is to allow Labour to destroy itself in these final months.
JC
March 13th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Dance and jump around in the sun you little tit sucking grasshoppers your winter of discontent awaits. If I was to follow the lead of the fuckwits the call themselves the government then I would increase my stocking rate on the farm year after year by 9% per year, the only trouble is that all would starve. Prehaps these FOOLS should take a drive in the country and see what happens when the rain fails to fall. The dipsticks that think nature,corruption and goodluck will see them through are in for a serve shock, ARSEHOLES.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Bureacracy is often in response to legislation. Most of us know this govt in particular has been most prolific in that area. It has to be administered, does it not? Maybe a useful policy would be a general legislative review and rationalisation.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Anybody that needs a practical demonstration of the madness that has been the labour party spend up need only look at the increase in health spending and then visit the north Shore hospital corridors. The left are screeching in the usual predictable manner about Key’s common sense approach to this burning issue. But is it any wonder that they screech so loud?
After all, turkeys would not vote for an early xmas would they?
March 13th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I was at the press club presentation. Key fluffed his lines and appeared not to have prepared very well. He needs to do a lot better. A National led Government will make big savings in public sector expenditure however, as most of the trough snorting Advisors, SPS’s amd other sicophants are all out looking for jobs as they know the game is over.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Nice work on attempting to obscure Key’s actual announcement guys – especially Paul and checkthefacts. Under Labour the bureaucracy has grown year on year. We can expect that it will continue to do so. Key has said that he will stop that growth, he will cap the bureaucracy at the current level. He won’t go out and fire the people who have been hired, he won’t slash it day one. But as the economy and the population grows, they will shrink as a percentage. They will need to become gradually more efficient, rather than gradually less efficient as the Labour govt has achieved.
It is a brilliant piece of policy, and you are attempting to paint it as being happy with the status quo. The status quo is year on year growth, Key is going to change that.
Last I heard you wanted Key to issue policy. He has issued it, and it is policy that a) Labour cannot match – at least not credibly, and b) Labour cannot attack, because it is blatantly obvious that it is a good idea. That is what the squealing is about.
And Paul, your attempted attack on percentages? So you’re saying that we should use absolute numbers – if we had 20,000 front line staff and 1,000 administrators, and we added 500 to each to give 20,500 frontline and 1,500 administrators, you’d be OK with that being described as ‘we added 500 administrators and 500 front line staff.’ And you’d argue that the fact that one group grew by 50% and the other by 2.5% would be irrelevant. Which is very clearly wrong – the percentages are the bit that tells the true story (even if it is a story that you don’t like).
March 13th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Another nice copy+paste from Mr Farrar. Where’s the original content brah?
March 14th, 2008 at 12:29 am
An example of bureacratic nonsense from Ministry of Education
The MOE certifies Student Management Systems software for schools to use – Good
The MOE certifies trainers to train schools to use SMS software – Bad
Why does a trainer, employed by the private sector company that supplies the software, need to be Ministry certified?
I am sceptical that Key can find the savings claimed when he is not going to cut or change so many government programmes because that is where the numbers go. For example WINZ offices moving into new premises all the time – staff engaged to administer Working For Families which National won’t touch. The health system, PHOs which National is not going to change etc.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Folks a little tichy aren’t we.
All I was saying that statistic used like this can be misleading, indeed confusing, because they are without context.
What a silly thing to say that “Under Labour the bureaucracy has grown year on year” Because if you looked at the facts, “under National the crime rate has grown year on year”, yet according to Simon Power all you need to do is ’stomp out crime’.
Seriously bring on this next National govt. Our family make a shit load of money, so we are in for a huge pay rise come tax cuts (don’t mention the increase in govt debt to pay for this – or the impact on inflation)
Crime will be “stomped out” and
Bureaucracy will be trimmed, which is good for me as I build my next house, there will be a ‘fixed RMA’ and red tape will be gone.
This is going to be just bloody brilliant isn’t it, only thing is you’ll be treating anyone without ‘common sense’ like 3rd class citizens once again. Do we remember when we were meant to look over our fences to see if people were sleeping the right beds to stop fraud (free and open society unless you are one of the great unwashed).
You guys are pathetic, the civil service has grown, Key is ‘comfortable’ with the current levels (note that not unhappy), and there is a suggestion that further down the line the numbers will drop, no actual promises and no indication where and how or what time frame.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Double stranded
Thanks for the link, I couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend the evening trolling through governmental web pages looking for human resources facts and figures. I had my own research to do thanks though, I’m sure it’s riveting.
Besides which, Key is ‘comfortable’ with the current levels, what the hell is the issue? Your golden boy is OK with the level of the civil service, end of story, or is it you aren’t happy with the golden one’s analysis, after all you folk don’t want to pay for anything you don’t like – how’s Brian Connell’s pay packet coming along?
March 14th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Paul: what context is important, and would explain the disproportionate growth of the bureaucracy v’s the front-line? You’re clutching at straws in attempting to argue that percentages somehow misrepresent the situation.
What exactly is silly about the statement that the bureaucracy has grown year on year? Is it untrue? Has our population grown that much that we need to grow the government too? Or do you just believe that growth of the government is always good?
You offer no arguments, only platitudes and opinions. You are sneering and condescending in your tone, and clearly think you are better than everyone else. Are you, by any chance, a university student like nome?
March 14th, 2008 at 6:14 am
This is terrific to hear key addressing this. I’ve asked several medical proffesionals why, when we spend an extra 6.5Bil a year on health has the waiting list doubled? Their response has always been that socialist governments always think that lots more people – regardless of who they are, will fix the problem.
To hear innocent bystander talk about how the state service was run down and Labour had to build it up again, my response is that with an extra 16000 full timers, and who knows how many contractors we have:
Health – waiting list has more than doubled
Police – violent crime up 7.5% year on year (not mentioning the amount of crime people don’t bother reporting)
Education – schools shut all over the country and over 20% coming out illiterate
Defense force – a laughing stock, no air force, and nearly a bil spent on the LAVs we’ll never be able to use
This is the state service that HC “rebuilt”. I would be quite happy if she put it back to where it was and gave us back the 16bil extra a year they are stealing from us. I think if the waiting list was halved it would be a good start.
March 14th, 2008 at 6:29 am
I noticed some left leaning blogger over on KBB or TS raised a test for Key to pass which was; can he reduce the size of the core bureaucracy without reducing productivity.
Someone flipped that around and asked has the huge growth in the Public sector this decade increased productivity by the same level.
So Paul and others, answer that, has productivity increased or decreased
March 14th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Question: Why does a pissant country of 4 million people need so many back-office bureaucrats at central and local government level?
Answer: It doesn’t.
Solution: A three phase culling programme.
Phase One: A 70% headcount reduction in six months in the total number [not percentages!] of media and communications officers, strategists, iwi liaison drones, and cycle safety co-ordinators. [There's no justification for winz to have 20 [at last count] “strategic planners” [whatever the feck they are] at their Wellington HQ with a support staff of 60+ [at last count].
Phase Two: The introduction of 1:1.3 hiring policy for all back office staff in the public sector. For every new Farmers suit wearer hired, 1.3 of them are to be made redundant. At the same time there will be no budget provision for the hiring of external consultants.
Phase Three: A progressive roll-out of sweeping departmental and organisational mergers to break the 19th Century public service meme which says that every district and region has to have its own core service provision – some obvious ones include: Auckland region local government, DHB’s, tertiary education [8 universities and 20+ polytechnics for 4 million people is nuts] – the goal is to bring these make work, CEO-heavy fixed-cost monsters into the 21st Century.
March 14th, 2008 at 6:44 am
John Dalley: “Nice use of percentages by Slippery John Key.”
Talking of Slippery, how much did Annette King get as a backhander for appointing Peter Hausmann and Ray Lind as bureaucrats?
March 14th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Paul: “Pluse as Johnny number boy himself said, not one person will be lost, he’s comfortable with the level of bureaucrats! What is this about, he’s not going to change one thing? This is worse than hot air, he’s talking about what he’s not going to do.”
Actually, dickhead, read it it again. He has deliberately given himself the ability to keep the numbers the same by reducing the number of policy-wallahs (aka student activitists with worthless sociology degrees, who would otherwise be unemployed/unemployable) and replacing them with frontline staff.
March 14th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Razorlight, that’s a good point. The only issue is: what is “productivity?”
It would not actually be that hard for the SSC to publish core productivity measures on a website that allowed people to comment and debate the effectiveness of such measures. That way over time, you could refine the measures until they truly reflected best practice.
No doubt you would start with the usual meaningless corporate bollocks that ends up in the Annual Report type of measures, but if you were serious about refinement and open to criticism then over time, you would probably end up with some extremely useful and meaningful performance criteria.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Key’s numbers were bizarre. Not for him, but the government. The only explanation is they are growing a class of voters, When the chiefs start multiplying disproportionally productivity falls and they spend their high-paid time doing their hair on facebook. I have seen this overseas, in a banana growing republic, where most of the educated workforce were on the government payroll. They eventually had to cut their pay 30% to manage the budget.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Paul: The bureaucrats will not be reduced in numbers by National. So the speech by Key was about what. The bureaucracy is too big but we won’t do a thing about it. Great claytons speech mate, and you folk are buying it hook line and sinker.
When you are traveling to the rugby at 160km/h and you’ve just missed your exit, what do you do?
(a) Put the vehicle in reverse and drive back to your exit
(b) Brake the vehicle to a stop, then put it in reverse and drive back to your exit
(c) None of the above
Paul, your suggestion is that one should put the vehicle into reverse immediately. I can almost guarantee you that you will be destroying large parts of the vehicle in the process and ultimately will not be able to reach your destination.
Unlike you, John Key and the National Party is doing the smart thing. They are applying the brake first.
But I can honestly not understand your “Labour good, National bad” mentality. You are trying to tell us that having the administration grow faster than front-line, useful staff is a good thing. That is quite simply bizarre. I, for one, would rather have more doctors and nurses on the floor. More teachers to reverse this politicised socialist mess of NCEA. The types of people that can actually save the mess Labour have made of our health system, education system and generally of New Zealand.
You on the other hand appear to encourage them. Legendary.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I can’t usually be bothered but Paul you are typing with your dick with last nights (8.04pm) comments:
NCEA….Yea Right!. Students work out how to get the most credits for doing the least work. NZ will pay for this for years. There are no longer winners and losers rather Tui’s and Bellbird’s, Dolphins and Whales, FFS when will you lefties realise that we are in a competitive world and we are not all created equal.
The TEC is close to as big a joke has been ever put together in Wellington, close to NZQA. The TEC do not know how to deliver their own funding policy initiatives. The Poly’s follow the rules and figure out that they are entitled to more funding than the TEC wants them to have so they have to change the rules. Talk about following their masters, stuff up then change the rules to make it ok. try running a business in that environment…oh thats right you dont run businesses just suck off the tit.
No competition between uni’s and poly’s…where the hell do you live? Linwood or Mars? There are approx 10,000 degree level EFTs at the polys and the unis want them. the govt has told the polys to get back to their own regions, no problem with that BUT no such initiative for the unis. The TEC has worked out how many students eash poly should have and if they go 3% above or below they are financially penalised…WTF I thought this govt wanted people to study, if over by 3%+ the poly gets less money. They have SO SO wrong!
Stand at top of Queen St Jafaville and look. Auckland Uni to one side, down the street is the Canterbury, Otago and Vic buildings, out on the shore there is AUT, Waikato and Massey plus all the polys. earth to paul; there are only 4 million people in NZ, how unis does Jafaville need? So TEC has strangled poly funding whilst they continue to pour money down the huge black hole which is the university sector and yet they still compete.
And before the zealot nat supporters get all stiffened up about introducing competition into the marketplace the stories that circulate in the tertiary sector about methods of ‘passing students’ by some private training institutes simply puts any credibility of NZ tertiary education in serious doubt. Whilst this is going on NZQA quietly shifts paper.
So from one who has been in the belly of the beast DO NOT try to tell me that all these extra ‘educational’ bureaucrats are adding value to education. They are adding value to the propoerty prices in Wellington both offices and houses.
As a PS: Cullen has dodged a potentially large bullet here by passing of the Minister of Tertiary Education to Hodgson. The peasants in this sector may revolt. Look for an early election.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Can I suggest to y’all, that the use of a RIP filter (ht dc) such as this:
//li[cite[small[number(substring(text(),2))< -4]]]
makes the comment thread, well, saner. Out of sight, out of mind. No need to feed invisible trolls. And so democratic!
March 14th, 2008 at 11:05 am
PaulL
“disproportionate” growth of civil servants to front line staff, you know this for a fact?
Bogus
“Police – violent crime up 7.5%” Nice statistic in isolation, may other crimes are increasing at much less rates and some are steady or declining, still we’d hate to pick out one random scare mongering statistic.
Pascal they may be applying the breaks, but they aren’t reducing the numbers immediately, so the numbers must be ok, or else this isn’t prudent govt to be holding onto blood sucking staff who don’t produce reports on time with no accountability (apparently).
Duxton, read it again (without the abuseive expletive), he’s happy with the level of the bureaucracy.
Flashman, the level of the NZ bureaucracy isn’t high internationally or proportionately? Flashman you denegration of NZ and the work done here belittles you. We are not some pissat country – tosser.
Back to Double Standard. You can’t stomach the idea that there are people out there independent of Labour and the unions etc that don’t agree with you guys, news flash buddie, there are bloody thousands of us, how else would you account for the entire decade of the 2000s to be led by a Labour Govt.
back to PaulL, so mine are opinions and the rest of the garbage is to be considered what exactly, hardly informed and reasoned debate.
This little side show goes. David posts something, you all jump up “me too me too” and then there is the “we’ll i’m not paying for it”, with a dash of “bloody socialist have ruined this country” and just a tad of “this is how it should be – common sense”.
99% of the arguements here are just opinion, and that is fine, because 99% of the people here don’t have all of the facts and last time I looked (despite what the anti-PC or anti thought police say) it was a free country to express one’s opinion. take southtops little diatribe above, what is that if it isn’t opinion.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:25 am
In Vote: Health, for instance, the public good would be better served by a number of simultaneous moves:
- mash the 21 DHBs back into a smaller number, lose the facade of democracy (they’re all micro-managed by MOH anyway) and the accompanying costs, and apply the savings to:
- PPPs for elective surgery. SX has almost 1m members – do they know sumpin’ the Gummint doesn’t? You betcha. Corollary: public hospitals run A&E, research, other care not suitable to provision in the private sector. (Oh, and before we get the socialistas arguing about profit-making, SX is a members’ trust.)
- use the Dutch model of compulsory health insurance, use the tax system/WFF to sort out affordability, and at the same time:
- make health insurance in approved schemes partially or wholly tax-deductible
Do we want this? Yes, we do.
Will it save money? Think, fewer DHB’s, smaller MOH. Yup, it will.
Will it happen? Depends who we vote for, don’t it? Flip a coin..
Sure beats sitting on a wait-right-here-hope-you-don’t-die-first list, hey?
And who hears of strikes, lack of doctors, dirty wards, too few wards, wrong-side operations and all the other daily headlines from the public sector fiasco, in organisations like Southern Cross (SX)?
That same model (a voucher system in all but name) can also be applied to education. After all, who teaches IT staff to run a Windows server or a Cisco router? Or a mechanic to maintain an Audi, Merc, Cat, Volvo or Pug? Not the public sector. These are all wholly private education functions. No Gummint penpushers there. No unit standards. No left-secondary-school-not-able-to-read-or-write’s. Just pure paid-for and earned qualifications, set by the commercial organisations concerned.
Lots of scope, chaps and chapesses, lots of scope.
(mash-up of my posts from the excellent Stuff ‘Gliding on’ blog here)
March 14th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Not overly impressed with John Key/National on this one – another very safe policy rather than guts – I would have preferred something like – staff numbers as of 6 years ago, with each department to justify any increase since then – would allow wriggle room for worthwhile growth (if it exists) but set the base much lower.
Also, why no response to Helen Clark on the 500 extra jobs for KiwiSaver – yes there might have been 500 jobs for the implementation, but surely not ongoing – if they are on going, what in hell are they doing? I can’t believe Key didn’t ram those numbers back down her throat – lack of business knowledge, lack of killer instinct?
This whole area is a ripe vein for National to plunder – for example, if you reduce the MOE by 40% how may admin staff / teacher resources does that free up in schools.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
““Police – violent crime up 7.5%” Nice statistic in isolation, may other crimes are increasing at much less rates and some are steady or declining, still we’d hate to pick out one random scare mongering statistic.”
????!!!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
Yeah, people give a shit about petty theft and parking infringements going down but dont care about VIOLENT CRIME??!!
MORE PEOPLE ARE GETTING RAPED, BEATEN AND MURDERED!
That is just retarded. You must work in academia.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Paul
You stated crime had gone down but as usual, when pulled up on it try to deflect it with the “whole picture” stuff. Anyone with any common sense knows this is utter nonsense. You are being niaive if you believe that with the police having to spend up to 50% of their time writing speeding tickets, that they will be more effective in combating serious crime. For example, several surveys last year showed that up to 60% of the rural community simply don’t bother phoning the police anymore, there isn’t any point, and so many crimes simply don’t go on the books. This is not the police’s fault. They are having to work under the absurd constraints imposed on them.
So while you are obviously happy to look at the hugely manipulated stats produced while inserting both fingers in your ears saying LA LA LA THERE IS NO INCREASE IN CRIME people with common sense won’t think you are being clever.
Back to the point. 16Bil more a year is now being spent on the state service and I’m darned if I can see how it’s better at all, and categorically not 16Bil a year better.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Paul: Pascal they may be applying the breaks, but they aren’t reducing the numbers immediately, so the numbers must be ok, or else this isn’t prudent govt to be holding onto blood sucking staff who don’t produce reports on time with no accountability
Think for a moment. What does it do to the public service when the incoming government suddenly lays off the majority of the staff? What happens to the government at that point in time? What happens to the services they were delivering?
A full investigation and a reasonable approach to resolve the problem can only come once you are in government. But not growing something needlessly is a sensible policy.
You however fail to address a simple question. Why is stopping the disproportional growth bad?
March 14th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Paul said this:
“You guys are pathetic, the civil service has grown, Key is ‘comfortable’ with the current levels (note that not unhappy), and there is a suggestion that further down the line the numbers will drop, no actual promises and no indication where and how or what time frame.”
Now I agree that all the dancing around the edges that has been going on, is pathetic. Oh yes, we’ll cap the number of bureaucrats, or perhaps we can conduct a review, perhaps we can raise their productivity…..
BOLLOCKS.
Elephant in room:
# PhilBest +3 Says:
March 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
“Look DPF, this is one of the FUNDAMENTAL REASONS that contracting something out to private enterprise will be so much cheaper. Private enterprise, for all the slogans of the Left, does NOT create the sort of feeding trough for overpaid supernumaries that the public sector does. This should NOW be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain, if it wasn’t before…..”
But a whole thread has gone down and only “Waymad” has got it…….
March 14th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Bogus news – Three of your examples are poor ones. Defence was run down under previous governments, Labour actually has a fairly good record on defence in terms of finally upgrading crusty old equipment and spending money on the things that we use and need. They’ve also managed to patch up our relationship with the US to some degree. No airforce? What about the sexy new NH-90 helicopters we are getting to replace the old iroquous and the replacements for the even older training helicopters? That along with the LAVs (and we can debate the actual execution of that one later) and project protector for the navy is quite a serious increase in capability. If anything they need to spend more money here to make sure they can recruit and maintain personel levels.
Closing schools is actually an example of the government being efficient. The schools that were closed down were by and large ones where rolls were declining and / or population projections showed the demand wouldn’t be there in the future.
As far as health goes I actually agree with you (as I’ve already suggested earlier). We have massive duplication of buearocracy with all the DHBs that we have while at the same time we are failing to pay skilled doctors, nurses etc well enough to stop them disappearing overseas. That equation has a very simple solution.
That leaves policing where we have all of the problems that you suggest along with one of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world and politicians on both sides engaging in a sordid competition to see who can appear “tough on crime.” Strangely I don’t see either party solving this one any time soon…. But at least the government has banned party pills, good to see they are dealing with the important issues of the day…