However let us see how the 18 “strategic planners” employed at WINZ HQ [who have a support staff of 60] stir themselves to deliver on this “aspirational” goal. Fat chance methinks.

In my opinion the public service today is shaped by nine years of Labour who lucked into nine years of economic sunshine: so of course this country now has legions of jobsworths and swarms of meeting-flies obsessed with inventing make-work processes and buying large quantities of cloth-of-gold underwear so that they can be incredibly busy taking in each other’s washing.

But now the economic fundamentals are very different. Change is required. And denial in the marble, latte machine and plate glass public service antheap simply will not do.

Your idea of performance measures is an interesting one as my local body group is going through the process of trying to force this through.

I would say that a good idea in the wrong place is a bad idea and the thinking that by implementing a performance system on every type of job is one bad idea.

I could tell you how my job, that is more data gathering, now requires me to invent a goal to aspire to so I can exceed my performance. This requires time and the extra staff in HR to implement the scheme and managers time to fill out the crap

or

I could tell you about my previous private company which set it’s internal groups, that should work together and complement one another, against each other and how my managers used to introduce new equipment at ~2 million a pop meet their performance criteria then move on after which the equipment was shelved as we expected as it would never meet our requirements

but instead

I will tell you how I went to increase my VISA card limit, the customer service person promptly cancelled my old cards and required me to fill in a whole new application form after this I realised that she obviously needed to meet her performance indicator.

You look at the people in the system, it is the system it’s self

Education change the ministry to an auditing group and give all the money currently spent on education to the children

Health change the ministry to an auditing group and give all the money currently spent on health back so each person can buy insurance.

Welfare give the people back their tax and make them save for retirement (a far greater cost then the dole)

ACC give people back their tax and make people and companies buy insurance.

Everyone should be made to have a minimum insurance cover and if they can’t that is where the government steps in.

Also user-pays (aarrg) pay for transport, pollution, resource use (water)

It is the systems that we run by that are past their use by date. They will one day be better than what we create but for now their time has come.

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Otherwise I am an unashamed advocate for the “Last Man Standing” rationale.
The “Right” has had to embrace this – but will never admit!

Cos there are plenty of competent people under State engagement that could do what you do!
Elucidate otherwise?

You just get on with doing your job and get out of there.

Though the last time I was asked to play I told them life was too short to get involved in obvious disasters and they would have to play without me. They flushed $30M down the dunny and then canned the project. I guess that’s what you call Evolution.

Every time they fill in a tax return – about fifty times a year probably for those trying to do something productive. But I guess you wouldn’t know?

MSM cowed and fed prepared lines by well oiled SpinMeisters. Burgeoning Civil Service to insulate the Elite from Poor Folk.

Chardonnay on tap.

Tell me again how much Mr Whitehead is paid by taxpayers? I’m sure he will lead by example and ask that his pay be cut by 10% because he is a principled fellow.

NION: Frankly, there is a case for Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias to be banged up in the slammer herself, along with some of her colleagues.

Not for challenging the size of the jail population and suggesting a prisoner amnesty, but for presiding over the outrageous waste of public expenditure involved in the new $80 million Supreme Court building in Wellington.

Restoration of the old High Court building, to house a Supreme Court of only five judges, was initially to cost $20 million. That was exorbitant enough. But now the cost has gone from $4 million a judge to $16 million a head.

The judiciary and the last government decided that the renovated old High Court would not be grand enough and that they could not fit the five judges, with their court and chambers, into the old category one-listed historic building.

So taxpayers were then landed with funding a new structure for the Supreme Court while still restoring the old High Court building.

A bit of double-bunking in one of those flash new container prison cells sounds like just the thing to bring the judiciary down to earth.

If anyone had the slightest inkling of this runaway cost of a Supreme Court, who would have voted for cutting our links with the Privy Council?

That gave us an alternative final court of appeal on the cheap – in a manner more befitting our circumstances as a tiny, hugely indebted country.

The growing band of unemployed, pensioners, those who have lost money in finance house crashes, and those having trouble meeting their power and food bills, are likely to take a dim view of paying for these grandiose plans by the judiciary.

Justice Minister Simon Power is getting it in the neck from the liberals for telling Dame Sian that, contrary to her suggestion, it is not Government policy to offer an amnesty to prisoners to get jail numbers down.

He could offer, as a counter, to divert a few of those containers from Corrections to Justice to house the Supreme Court judges in the meantime, while reconsideration is given to the question of judicial accommodation and to possible re-establishment of links with the Privy Council.