Kiwiblog

If you have a massively growing public service, then you need many more HR staff to cope with them all, and boy has Labour delivered. Gerry Brownlee has the figures showing the number of HR staff has shot up under Labour from 266 to 638 last year. And the cost has gone from $16 million to $51 million.

This is even higher than the growth in comms and media staff which has doubled.

So which agencies have had the biggest increases in HR staff:

• Treasury from 7 to 14
• Health from 10 to 25
• Education from 9 to a staggering 31
• SSC from 2 to 8
• MSD from 44 to 76
• Justice from 15 to 37
• Labour from 15 to 30
• The brand new Department of Housing and Building alerady has 10 HR staff!!!
• Corrections from 19 to 47
• IRD from 34 to 68

They only set the Dept of Housing and Building up a couple of years ago, and already they have convinced their Minister they need 10 HR staff. Oh I am looking forward to the Cabinet Expenditure Control Committee if National wins.

The Dom Post endorses National’s policy to freeze staffing levels in the non-operational areas of the public service.

National Leader John Key is right to target waste in the public service, and right to draw attention to the blossoming in numbers and wages that has taken place under Labour. The spend-up on mandarins has been large, the pay packets bloated and much of the work produced of, at best, dubious value, The Dominion Post writes.

However, it is also right to draw attention to his double standards, and to caution that he should use a scalpel, not an axe, in seeking savings.

The statistics highlighted by Mr Key underscore what has been apparent for some time: The Government, flush with cash from taxes that have been too high for too long, has spent that money with the insouciance that comes from having full pockets and an insufficient regard as to whether it is getting value for the spending.

Mr Key has been at pains to say that National will not be going to cut what he calls front-line staff – teachers, doctors, nurses, social work ers and so on. Instead those numbers on the front line will increase. But National will “pull hard on the handbrake” to stop any more growth in the bureaucracy.

That is a laudable goal, and one which deserves to gain public support.

The Dom Post also suggests less junkets for retiring MPs would equally save money!

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.