Recruiters head over Tasman to find civil servants

A New Zealand recruitment team is going to Canberra next week to woo Australian civil servants to fill vacancies and fix a perceived skills shortage here.

Wellington recruitment company Talent2 will go to the Australian capital next Friday seeking new employees on behalf of 13 New Zealand Government departments and agencies.

Among those seeking new employees are the Ministry of Transport, New Zealand Police, Inland Revenue Department and Department of Corrections, who have vacancies available for policy managers and analysts, researchers, evaluators, performance analysts and economists.

The recruitment drive comes shortly after National finance spokesman John Key's comments that jobs in the state sector grew by 6.3 per cent over the last year up from 230,550 to 245,100 in the year to June 2006.

Figures from Statistics New Zealand showed the total number of jobs in the economy grew by just 3 per cent at the same time and state sector employee salaries grew by an average of 4.2 per cent as opposed to 3 per cent in the private sector.

"I think taxpayers are getting sick of propping up the Taj Mahal in Wellington," said Mr Key.

He said Finance and the State Services Commission had received "endless" advice to sort out the burgeoning bureaucracy and New Zealanders were more likely to be in favour of funding the cancer drug Herceptin than hiring more public servants.

"If there was a choice I'm pretty sure I know which one people would choose," he said.

A spokesperson from State Services Commission said low unemployment rates, similar systems in the New Zealand and Australian public service and the nature of the global marketplace were the significant factors behind recruitment agencies looking at staff across the Tasman.

She said commission surveys showed there was a "shortage of skills and talented people" locally.


Situations vacant

Ministry of Transport
New Zealand Police
Inland Revenue
Department of Corrections
Families Commission
Land information New Zealand
New Zealand Customs
Ministry of Education
Accident Compensation Corporation
Ministry of Economic Development
Ministry of Health
Department of Internal Affairs
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry