SPARC salaries
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm by David FarrarOne of the signs of third termitis is the automatic defence of the status quo. The Government and associated left blogs have rushed to defend SPARC, and claim thereis no need to change anything.
I was intrigued by National’s sports policy as it appeared to be meticiously well researched and referenced. What that suggests to me is that sporting insiders have been helping write the policy because of the level of knowledge.
Since the policy was released, I’ve chatted to a few people in the sports administration arena, and to a person they are critical of SPARC and its growing bureaucracy. Now a smart third term Government would be hestitant about rushing in to defend it, when so many people are unhappy.
Bernard Hickey has done an interesting analysis. National revealed 55% of SPRAC staff earn over $100K a year. He wondered how that compares with other government agencies. Now Bernard could have chosen a lightweight agency such as Youth Affairs to compare to, but he chose the Reserve Bank – can’t get much more critical than that. What does he find:
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s annual report shows that it has 221 staff and that 71 or 32% of those are paid more than NZ$100,000. Over 55% of Sparc staff are paid over the NZ$100,000 threshold. There are 25 staff at the RBNZ who are paid more than NZ$150,000 or 11% of staff.
That compares with Sparc’s 16% of staff who are paid more than NZ$150,000. The total remuneration cost for the RBNZ in 2006/07 was NZ$21.8 million or an average of NZ$96,642 per staff member. That’s 24% less than the average for Sparc of NZ$129,411.
So we are paying our Reserve Bank staff 24% less than our sports funding agency staff. Now let us compare their importance starting with the RBNZ:
The RBNZ has the power to destroy or save the economy with its monetary policy and the power to regulate and/or save our banks. Every single bank note we have in our wallets is printed by and managed by this institution. Our payments system depends on it. …
Governor Bollard must front up to the public, politicians and his own board once every 6 weeks or so to explain what he’s going to do with the economy. He is regularly criticised by many commentators (including me) and will be held responsible for the economic life of the nation. The pressure is intense and the stakes are high.
If one of the big four banks were to fail on his watch (which I think is utterly unlikely), he and the bank would be responsible for a national disaster. It would cripple the economy for years. …
The Reserve Bank is an institution integral to the economic life of New Zealand and the Governor is one of the four or five most powerful people in the country. If he stuffs up we all pay.
Yep pretty critical indeed. And SPARC:
Sparc encourages us to take up sport and its CEO is a former international hockey player who once was the head of sales for New Zealand Post, a monopoly. Its success is measured by (I hope) how many of us regularly play sport and are therefore healthier, although Sparc’s Statement of Intent seems not to give any specifics on these or how it has performed recently. If the CEO of Sparc stuffs up it would be a one day story that maybe generates an independent inquiry that ends in a 50 page report that no one remembers.
A fair summary. So the conclusion:
Sparc is not more important than the Reserve Bank, its people should not be paid 24% more than people at the Reserve Bank and we should not be paying more than half of its staff NZ$100,000 to give away around NZ$71 million of public money.
Bernard also has a lot of good stuff on the $18 million SPARC is planning to spend on their websites, on how Trade Me and Staff websites have cost far less than this, and how the traffic to the SPARC sites appears to be so small it is unmeasurable.
There seems to be a very strong case for change.
Tags: Bernard Hickey, Reserve Bank, SPARC
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
And the left wonder how tax cuts can be funded. Amazing.
Vote:Back with zeal I see DPF.
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Agree, Captain Crab. Multiply this out thru all the government departments, SOE’s, QANGO’s, etc., and watch the millions add up……
I don’t see at all why Kiwis should be bothered about job losses when the jobs involved are almost entirely parasitical, and are costing hardworking struggling taxpayers. It is time to put a stop to this socialist rorting of the Democratic process by the simple means of getting a big enough proportion of the voters in their pockets, siphoning money out of the pockets of people with REAL jobs into the pockets of leeches and parasites and hangers-on whose support for the bloody socialists can then of course be counted on regardless.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
SPARC and the Reserve bank are more than a wee bit different, so comparing percentages of people who earn whatever will obscure the absolute numbers…..perhaps the intention of using percentages.
SPARC is already promoting community involvement and organisation while making funds available to people and groups who apply. That is what National will do. National will also have to run a web site to provide access to information and processes. The cost of SPARC’s web site does seen high. I’d like to know what they include in that pot before assuming it is just for a web site.
The consistent theme I see is people who don’t know what’s actually going on rushing out with a truckload of ill-founded assumptions. When they are shown to be wrong, the shrug and rush out the next truckload of ill-founded assumptions on the next topic.
Looks like a sort of campaign you’d run when you you want to make everything look terrible – whether it is or not.
C/T Certified.
When Is National going to oppose school uniforms as a Stalinist imposition on parent and child choice? At $800 this year alone for us, that’s $16 / week…..equal to a tax cut.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I am disgusted with sparc. They invented this push play crap i believe. It seems the more that sparc do , the fatter kiwis become. Get rid of sparc, maybe we will all get thinner?
I am in total despair at the lack of fiscal responsibility in this country. These are crazy days, when the govt wastes 60grand on wassup badges to make maori feel better about themselves.
They are treating tax payer money like a bottomless pit, demanding as much money as they feel fit.
Why do we need a womens affairs ministry? Or the outfit that silly cow cindy kiro heads up. And, the electricity commission. Departments and commissions are springing up like mushrooms. I could probably list a dozen other multi million dollar govt organisations we just don’t need.
Why can’t the government stick to core activities? I don’t know how we ended up in todays situation. It really is pigs at the trough time.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Whilst I cannot see the reason for SPARC employees getting half decent salaries this is an issue I find fascinating. If you want to get decent public servants then need you need to pay the bucks.
Vote:Same goes for MP’s. If an MP salary was $500k – $1m p.a do you seriously believe you’d have the Sue Bradford’s getting a look in?
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I don’t know too much about SPARC but based on your post and what I have read and heard in the public domain someone is empire building. I think the previuos CEO (Hill I think his name was) may be the one who did that. From what they do it seems to me a CEO paid $150,000 plus a couple of deputies paid $80/100,000, 3 or 4 lackeys paid $50/60000 and 3 or 4 admin support paid $30,000 should easily run the show and achieve their mission statement.
That Mission Statement should be to promote sport and recreation throughout New Zealand and excellence from our elite athletes which would exclude the All Blacks who should be self funding and administered through the NZRFU. They would continue with funding of sports as per now.
This Empire Building seems prolific throughout sports bodies – take the Rugby Union for example. On a local basis I was in the Sport Hawkes Bay Offices for the first time a few weeks ago. While I was waiting for the person I had an appointment with I could not believe how many staff they had running around there all trying to look busy and important. On first look the staff there could easily be cut in half. I have no idea where their funding comes from – I guess some of it could be from SPARC.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Steve W: That’s rubbish. Hickey has done some simple, straight-forward analysis that – on the surface at least – calls into question the financial prudence of Sparc’s management, and perhaps its responsible Minister. (Who is the “responsible” Minister, by the way?)
Your reaction has not been to (say) research any overlooked aspects and present alternative analytical conclusions. Rather, you have prattled on about “ill-founded assumptions” and – by implication – attempted without any facts to disparage Hickey’s fact-based analysis as falling into that category.
I give Hickey credit for asking some serious questions about data that points to wasteful public expenditure. If the Minister, or Sparc, or even you are prepared to gather facts and counter-arguments to refute suggestions of waste, I will examine them with interest – and I’ll bet that Hickey will too. But please don’t simply pout because somebody criticises the Government. Somebody has to ask the hard questions – given the state of NZ’s economy, its infrastructure, its social services and even its “rule of law”.
Finally, I suspect that Hickey used percentages to compare the two institutions because of their substantially different numbers of total staff. It would be surprising if there was a conspiracy story there – unless somebody is trying maliciously to conceal that Sparc has a larger staff complement than the RBNZ!
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Pay me small amount of 500k and I will build them a fabulous website.
Vote:Keep 250k
Give someone like the Whale 250k where he can find someone to build it for around… oh lets say… 100k.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:29 pm
The numbers may be correct, but the comparison Hickey makes is mismatched – much as I would have liked him to get it right.
It just isn’t realistic to expect important jobs to be the most well renumerated in a modern world. If they were, pop stars would earn far less than the president of the United states, but they don’t.
It’s damn hard trying to find a direct comparison. The very existence of SPARC supports the view that intangibles like the “importance of sport to the nation” can be measured with accuracy. They can’t. The goals of the RB can and are.
[DPF: Pop stars are not employed by the Government. Reserve Bank and SPARC are both government agencies. It is quite legitimate to compare salaries between two govt agencies]
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Hmmm – struggling to think of an actual example to quote here, but I’m sure I have heard multiple instances in the past of opposition left MPs inquiring as to how certain key govt employees/appointees (e.g. Crown Health Enterprise CEOs) could possibly be worth their generous remuneration packages/golden handshakes.
To which the National Govt ministers of the day would INVARIABLY respond with the thing about “but you have to offer market salaries to attract the *best* people…”
[DPF: And you do, but you have to realise the market is not at work here, but the Govt is. If SPARC had to raise its own money, do you think they would have 55% of staff earning over $100k?
Can anyone explain why market rates for handing out sports money should be 25% higher than market rates for managing monetary policy?
I'm all in favour of market rates, but the issue is whether SPARC needs so many managers who need that level of pay?]
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Pop stars are not employed by the government yes that’s true, well, ok Chris Knox may have come close, but I’ll run with it anyway. It is the influence that these people hold that is the correct comparison. And Hickey discovers it himself when he says SPARC is not more important than the RB – he admits he’s not comparing similar items. If you are important you are important because you hold influence. Politics is about influence – increasing for yourself, decreasing it for your opponent.
So in this case, to compare another government agency on an equal footing to SPARC, you’d have to find an agency that spends 70 million a year on encouraging a voluntary activity, and is guided by intangible goals, with staff numbers the same or proportionately similar to SPARC.
Hickey has chosen an agency that should hold more importance than it does. As an analyst he should know better than to assume his personal values are true values.
Who would that be? The MSD? Something like that?
Labour haven’t learned this lesson yet and may be incapable of it. But if National ever get it straight, the landslide will come in about 90%
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
The RBNZ probably has a fair number of graudates and clerical staff which would tend to drag down their average, while SPARC may have more of a flat structure with more individual autonomy.
But DPF is right. If SPARC was really subject to market influences it is hard to see how they would end up paying such high wages to over half their workforce.
Labour: hates rich pricks, creates rich pricks.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
“So in this case, to compare another government agency on an equal footing to SPARC, you’d have to find an agency that spends 70 million a year on encouraging a voluntary activity, and is guided by intangible goals, with staff numbers the same or proportionately similar to SPARC.”
And you would conclude what? That SPARC isnt a waste of tax payer money, because another waste of tax payer money is wasting about the same amount?
Try again.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Oh come on people don’t get down on SPARC they are doing a fabulous job. They promote survival of the fittest parisite and competition in the way of heavy duty gravy sucking. Something that way to many people in this country excel in.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Goodgod and other defenders: rubbish. By any measure that holds up to rational scrutiny, RBNZ employees should not be well back in a salary queue that’s led by sports enthusiasts.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
… and we wonder why the average salaries in Wellington are always higher than anywhere else. Its obvious the job market is different when spending tax payers money
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
This geezer has been getting stuck into them and former Minister Ducky a bit over the last five years – this was the only example I could find…
Vote:http://www.captimes.co.nz/column/23/n/927/Coldduckarse.boss
He did one about how they turned over their entire management team three times since they were created and some other juicy figures but i can’t find it on the Capital times website
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
found one – http://www.captimes.co.nz/column/23/n/826/Arseaboutfacethinking.boss
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Culture of extravagance anyone?
It’s definitely a case of third termitis. It’s good to watch Labour self destruct. They don’t even realise what they’re doing wrong. All bodes well for a massive defeat for Labour at the pending elections.
If Labour’s sole reason to govern is to secure good jobs for their mates, what’s going to happen when that plug is pulled later this year? Other than a whole lot of tears and sour grapes for their supporters.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
The Minister of Sport & Recreation is in fact Clayton Cosgrove. Perhaps as the “responsible” Minister he might be prepared to outline for us mere taxpayers the level of Sparc salaries over $100k and over $150k that he accepts as reasonable. Purely as a hypothetical question, of course, as this will be another one of those very convenient “employment matters” where a Minister is not allowed to have a view – unless he wants to get rid of someone with a wink and a nudge.
Vote:July 3rd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Poor old Peter Miskimmin is going to be reamed out over this when it’s the fault of Nick Hill, the former CEO (now of the Commerce Commission), a chap who couldn’t find his arse with both hands but could find $33 million for a yacht race on the other side of the world…
Vote:July 4th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I think it says a lot about NZ. Most people seem to think that sport is the most important thing in life, more important than business or the economy. Exactly how many times does an AB need to be arrested drunk before he loses his job?
Vote:July 4th, 2008 at 12:12 am
WADROC beautox, sport is important. But Labour has overseen (a) slashing of pokie funding to sports clubs (whether you like it or not, it’s often the difference between little Jonny or Julie getting to play in a uniform or not) (b) umpteen millions to a fucked up yachting regatta that does fuck all for yachting in Godzone (c) grossly overpaid phys ed graduates at SPARCs HQ and (d) a trip to Valencia for Mallard to get in the gossip pages. All Blacks? No one gives a fuck about the All Blacks. Go out tomorrow and watch a club game. That’s where it’s at.
edit: I meant, like the Manchester United ‘ brand ‘, only drunk expats and masochists give a fuck about the All Blacks…
Vote:July 4th, 2008 at 12:15 am
PS Jimmy Cowan vs Matt Henjak. Google it.
Vote:July 4th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Anyone know if Tana UMANGA is still getting a quarter of a mill a year after Trev Mallard appointed him a sporting ambassador, or what he did to earn it.
Vote: