Hard News: Leaving the bunker
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I am not arguing it won't have an effect.
I am arguing that leading with the impact on Wellington's cultural life is venal, elitist, and calculated to reinforce the very resentment that supposedly motivates cutting the public sector. I do not understand why it even rates a mention when there are stronger arguments in pointing to the work that public servants do.
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Exactly Stephen.
The debate should be about whether or not those jobs are important enough for us to pay however many million dollars on them.
Not whether theatre, a movie theatre, a supermarket, a corner dairy, etc etc will suffer.
If factories close down in small towns, it sucks for local businesses, they get burned. That isn't a reason for keeping the factory open though.
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High paying jobs are a win win.
Early Ford car assemblers were paid well (Ford is responsible for some shit but not low pay for his workers). This built pride loyalty and the American economy.
Not a model for govt employees but for the general economy. -
and density is probably why auckland lacks it!
I've lived here most of my adult life Che, and I can assure that most of us Aucklanders are pretty dense.
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I have to be a little careful here, but I'd like to respond to the few reactions to my earlier comments.
Mind you, Oz does have an 3rd layer of Govt (State, in addition to Federal and Local) compared with NZ's 2-layer system.
Agreed and it's hard for someone who spent most of their life in a unitary and unicameral system to understand the merit of state/territory governments (perhaps it would be clearer if I lived in Darwin or Perth). The IR reforms of the last Liberal/National Coalition proved that the Cmwth could do anything they really wanted (the High Court took a very broad view of corporations head of power in the Constitution) and I suspect that, had they had the chance, they would have reduced states/territories to little more than service providers. What the new government will do is less clear (where it is clear however, I suspect it's pretty boring to most) and I've not yet seen what Nelson announced today (5 point plan including reform of the Federation).
LOL, yeah, I got a mate who got a job recently working as a lawyer for the Govt over in Sydney. He said after 3 months he hadn't actually been asked to do any work whatsoever. When it came time for his review, his boss said she was really, really pleased with his work. And he's getting paid damn good money too.
I'm surprised by this as most of the government lawyers I know are relatively busy if only on contract work... oh and the occasional bit of corruption
And as for Llew's concern that crazy expats might return... well this one would like to someday soon...
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Key's talking about a wage 'saving' of $500,000,000 over three years.
<scribbles on back on envelope...>
housing and salarying a bum on seat can cost between $80k-$100k+ per year, per person.
that's between 1600 and 2000 jobs gone (but not necessarily from wellington).
makes me wonder where in the public service? there are a few over-inflated policy units that really do need to be shrunk... but these kinds of numbers would herald a potential return to the bad old days of richardson and birch.
makes me wonder how a razor-gang government would be able to actually get any policy implemented? low unemployment means we struggle to fill staff positions now. make life hell for the public service and it will go to hell in a handbasket real quick.
(otoh, it might make the current tranche of bureaucrats stay put in a job for more than five minutes...)
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I didn't realize people cost so much.
that's a figure i heard somewhere, but someone with management experience could confirm it. it's roughly salary +$20/30k in overheads.
and we're not talking trips to fiji and a laid-on lunch. it's air-con and ict support.
What do unemployed policy developers do?
become contractors, on +$20k p/a
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makes me wonder where in the public service? there are a few over-inflated policy units that really do need to be shrunk... but these kinds of numbers would herald a potential return to the bad old days of richardson and birch.
Yeah. And so far Key has been throwing out the 'bureaucrats rather than front line'. Even if it doesn't hit the mythical front line. It's a lot of people to pull out of the civil service. That's what... 4-5% of them?
Unless they're going to disestablish something (or some things) large - kiwisaver, working for families, TEC - that the current government has created, that's going to create a real squeeze. There are some departments that you can't just cut 5%. So some places are going to be carrying more of the load.
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It's a lot of people to pull out of the civil service. That's what... 4-5% of them?
yup.
i can't even begin to wonder where the national party is looking to. but, from chatting with david farrar the other week you'd think that the TEC is in the headlights.
now whether farrar has the ear of national party policy-writers is another matter altogether...
the interesting thing is that the number of jobs targetted for axing is approximately the same as the number of big infrastructure projects that have sprung up in the last election cycle. things like staffing kiwisaver, staffing the recent round of prisons, staffing "welfare for families".
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Yeah, TEC would be the obvious one. It's very strategic direction, and undoing the market reforms that national set in place to have tertiary institutions compete with each other. Presumably it'd get folded back into the ministry and cut in half. It's not 500 staff though, or even close. There would have to be trimmings, implemented through budget cuts, across the board.
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from chatting with david farrar the other week you'd think that the TEC is in the headlights
I'm aware that TEC's not performed as well as people hoped - myself included - however simply cutting it and returning to the Ministry may well be a false economy. Obviously, it'd depend on what National tertiary funding policy is, but if it is anything like their previous demand-driven voucher system, any savings from reduce salaries will not match the blow-out in funding wasted on courses with little or not labour market value. The tertiary reforms may not be a complete success but they have at least repositioned and reorganised the tertiary sector closer to the needs of the labour market and industry. If this is an example of the thinking that's gone into National's policy, it's worrying and shows they've learned little since last time.
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The way National will get ahead in corrections won't be by reducing the muster. Their crime policy certainly won't be leading with less time in prison for a lot of people, which is what it would take.
The only way they'll get ahead, is that Labour has gone full steam building several prisons, to catch up with reality. They could catch a break on that capital spending by letting it slip again.
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