OPINION
New Zealand finds itself at a familiar spot in its history. A new government has come in and is promising to shake things up. It wants to make New Zealand a better place. More competitive. Deliver better public services. This is pretty much like every other incoming government since MMP.
What makes this government different though is its commitment to a radical programme of cuts. Cuts to the taxes of those who have already done well over the past 20 years. $3bn for landlords, and income tax cuts that are worth more and more the higher up the income scale you go. All of this is supposed to help tackle the cost of living crisis. A crisis actually being faced by tenants, the poor and those on benefits. This is exactly the group that won’t be helped by their package.
To pay for all this a different sort of cut is needed. Cuts to public services, and to the number of workers who work in the public service. All those bureaucrats we don’t need right? Like DOC workers. Or those working in biosecurity at MPI. Or those at Worksafe keeping our workplaces safe and secure. The list goes on.
But all of this is based upon two fundamental ideas that just aren’t true. The first of these is that the number of public servants has grown exponentially over the past couple of years. The evidence on this is pretty clear from Stats NZ. The number of filled jobs has been remarkably steady over the past two decades – and indeed was higher under previous governments in the 1990s.