KEY POINTS:
In announcing his "razor gang" to cut government spending, National leader John Key has his facts wrong. Without recognising the mistake, Mr Key threatens the public services on which New Zealanders depend, and which they value.
National's policy paper states: "Since 2000 the number of people who are employed in central government administration has grown from 25,900 to 39,400. These are people who are mainly engaged in formulating and administering government policies."
Not so. And left uncorrected, the razor will not cut mythical administrators that Mr Key says reach almost 40,000, but will slice services from communities and jobs away from hard-working New Zealanders, just as we're battered by the world's biggest financial crisis since the Depression.
Mr Key's figure refers to the entire public service, which does include people working on policy from public health to climate change. But it also includes Department of Conservation rangers, probation officers, prison officers, customs officers, scientists at research institutes, call-centre operators for KiwiSaver, social workers and court staff.
These jobs clearly are not, as National claims, "mainly engaged in formulating and administering" policy. Claiming they do shows major flaws in National's approach, which disturbingly seems to be a rehashing of the worst of the 90s when public services were gutted by National.
Mr Key wants new prisons and tougher probation, but says workers who will deliver these policies are administrators. Indeed, National's Wellington-bashing also overlooks that almost 60 per cent of the public service works elsewhere.
Moreover, the growth in the public service deserves a context that is sadly missing. Mr Key is right that it's grown since 1999. During the 90s, public services were slashed to their lowest level since the end of Word War II.
Today there are 42,000 public service workers, 8000 fewer than in 1990, despite the population having increased by 70,000.
Many New Zealanders remember the 90s. Razor gangs got to work on benefits, causing inequality to soar. The public service was hit. Privatisation grew, often resulting in foreign asset-stripping and onerous user pays. Since then, public sector growth of 11 per cent has been less than the 13 per cent growth in the workforce at large.
New Zealand has a small public service by world standards. Figures show our public service is smaller than the average in the 29 developed countries in the OECD. Including states and territories, our public service is also smaller than Australia's on a per capita basis.
Mr Key's underlying assumption is ill-thought-out. Take, for example, regulation.
Recently, there have been a raft of failures overseas in everything, from food safety to a spectacular meltdown in American financial markets. After each disaster, "bureaucrats" are not sacked. Government oversight is instead toughened.
That New Zealand has largely escaped these crises is due in part to the diligence of our public servants.
It's too easy to demonise regulations, or those who devise and enforce them. But as President George W. Bush has discovered to his peril, glib sound-bites about waste are often just that. So consider one of National's favourite statistics: communications staff growing by 13 per cent. Underneath the statistic is 57 more people.
What do they do? National doesn't say. It could be providing the public with information about bio-security at airports; alerting us to the dangers of didymo; or preparing enrolment campaigns for the current election. All useless?
Similarly, National likes to point to ministry staff growing faster than teachers or nurses. However, the two biggest areas of public sector growth are health and education. From 2000 to 2006 our hospitals got 4000 new nurses and 1400 new doctors. Our schools got 6000 new teachers.
But what if the Ministry of Health increases the number of staff providing computer support to hospitals, from two to three? That's a 50 per cent rise. On paper, these workers are administrators or "bureaucrats". In real life, they're providing essential support to our nurses and doctors.
A more accurate gauge is looking at where more people, not percentages, have been added. Hamilton has 370 new staff at Inland Revenue. They're mainly call-centre operators, who have helped more than 800,000 New Zealanders sign up to KiwiSaver.
There were 807 more prison officers between 2000 and 2006. And 400 more staff were needed to run new prisons in Waikato and Otago. These workers are included in the numbers Mr Key uses to paint a picture of a ballooning bureaucracy, deserving the chop.
Unfortunately, his underlying premise is wrong. We hope it is rectified before the axe starts to fall.
* Brenda Pilott is national secretary of the Public Service Association, the union for public sector workers.
