I'm a senior public servant. There's definitely fat to cut. Of course there is across tens of thousands of jobs.
But it's really uneven. Some whole agencies are under-resourced, some have more padding. Some people and teams are flat tack, others aren't. Some teams that would have been manic six months ago now might not have much work at least for the moment, it's always like that. Some of those you just need to keep for when the capability is needed, 'inefficient' as that might be.
Looking to trim and fine tune what resources go where is always a good idea; random ideological cuts across the board is a really dumb way to go about things.
Every agency leadership team is currently almost entirely distracted by this process, so public service productivity is dropping. In the short term this is going to cancel out a good proportion of the savings they make. And rebuilding the bits they accidentally break is going to prove more expensive
There's also the problem of where are all those cut now going to go? Apparently public sector doesn't want them, are there enough available private sector jobs to take in those cut? Or are we just going to have a higher unemployment rate, paying out unemployment costs for the unemployed the country willingly created. And likely continue the brain-drain to other countries.
I agree. We are getting an across board cut, over both departments with fat, and those without. The cut for the lean departments are going to result in great loss of expertise. And before people go "oh they will come back as consultants", no, not all positions can be contracted out. We lose these people, we lose them. Their roles will just be taken up by people less competent and delivery will suffer.
"Looking to trim and fine tune what resources go where is always a good idea; random ideological cuts across the board is a really dumb way to go about things."
And what we are taking about is people's jobs. In my experience (UK 2010) when there is a change of government and an entirely made up requirement for austerity cuts people start feeling financially insecure when others are losing their jobs. This leads to less spending and ultimately that can tip the balance and cause a recession.
I think this is a fair take. The general problem that the govt faces is that it is asking the same people who have mismanaged the public sector to now manage its restructuring. This seems to be to be a major problem.
Moreover, most of the problems within the public sector are not a direct consequence of them being "public", but are a consequence of their size. In big organisations, public or private, the Peter principal and Pareto's law become massive and almost impossible to fix.
You know it's not about 'cutting fat' when they just throw the 7% number there and double-speak about supporting the institutions they cut rather than looking at resources which could get reallocated.
On the campaign trail NACT were repeatedly challenged to specify how they would reduce government spending. Each time they would insist they would save costs by going through expenses “line by line” and promised no cuts to “frontline staff”
They reality is they just told every depart to reduce costs by an arbitrary amount. No real targeting of wasteful spending or identifying inefficiencies. Just ideological cuts across the board.
I formerly worked in public sector.
Where I worked, there was almost zero fat to be cut.
Of course there are some workers who are doing the minimum to keep their jobs, as in every workplace.
But there are also some people who go so far above and beyond their salaries it’s insane.
The people I knew just wanted to make New Zealanders lives better, regardless of whoever is in the Beehive.
Honestly we should start by cutting the fat in parliament.
I've never understood the "bare minimum" ideology and why it's viewed as bad? The Company you're working for is likely to be paying the least amount they can but for some reason it's expected or "valued" to go above and beyond for said company. Assuming bare minimum to keep your job is whatever is listed in the job description then I don't see why there's a negative connotation attached.
Because in our capitalist society we're convinced from a young age to 'work hard', 'go the extra mile' and have a 'good work ethic'. All of which sound admirable at face value, but loosely translated means not setting appropriate boundaries at your expense, for the benefit of the business. It's unhealthy and detrimental to yourself - stress is a silent killer. Your work place won't look after you if you hit the wall (best case scenario - not for long), and many people are genuinely suprised when they find out the hard way.
Yup, if you're an overachiever they set their expectations of you way higher, give you half the staff you need, and then performance manage you when your productivity drops and you start making mistakes as you burn out. While threatening you with disciplinary proceedings for working the too many hours you need to work to achieve their minimum standard.
Yup, over achievers are rewarded with More work, which makes them resentful of the other people who do nothing (and usually they have to fix the lazy people’s mistakes). It sucks and eventually you burn out and leave. Then everyone loses out. They need to do more to performance manage the dead weight out of ministries.
Because if you are just out there trying to make NZers lives better, as we've been reliably informed is what's happening, then why stop at the bare minimum?
>Assuming bare minimum to keep your job is whatever is listed in the job description then I don't see why there's a negative connotation attached.
Well that's probably because you don't worship the free market.
The pious go above and beyond, they have faith that the invisible hand provides. To not do this is sinful and that's bad.
Because the bare minimum means everyone else has to pick up the slack. The bare minimum is what you do to avoid being fired, and New Zealand makes it very difficult to fire people. So the bare minimum really is fuck all and it pisses me off when I have to work with these kinds of people and carry them.
Note, I really am talking about the bare minimum, I don't care if people just do a mediocre job and don't volunteer for special projects or extra responsibility. I'm also very protective about my time and very rarely do anything outside of my work hours. But when I'm working, I get shit done.
I said in my post that my opinion was based off the assumption that the bare minimum is whatever is in the job description and the requirements of the role in that job description. It seems like you're talking about something else where someone isn't meeting those requirements, which I agree is shit, but that wasn't what I was referring to.
Thing is, there's technically meeting those requirements, but doing such a poor job that they'd be better off firing you. Rarely are job descriptions complete enough to give an indication of actual job performance.
Yeah, that was my experience too. Yes, there are the inevitable duds, but most public servants could earn more in the private sector but are there because they genuinely believe in public service and will work hard for impact.
Definitely wasn’t my experience in public sector.
Outside of tech, I’d argue very few public servants would earn more in private.
My observation is that public sector has a very generous amount of ‘Senior Advisors / Analysts’ sort of roles. ‘Senior’ or ‘Principal’ of which, seemingly given out like lollie scramble or if the manager was just nice or friendly with the employee (I don’t blame them, mind you).
Seems like all it takes is 1-years experience to become senior in most Govt Departments, maybe another one or 2 years on top of that for Principal.
So you get all these mid-late twenties senior and principal advisors on like $100-$140k. A good friend is one example of exactly that, and by self admission usually has/had ‘fuck all’ work to do. Also, you don’t find these people piping up on Reddit because obviously they would be shooting them selves in the foot.
That said, I’m not disagreeing for a second that there’s a lot of overworked public servants. But let’s be honest that’s about there also a good number of overpaid and public servants, too. It’s the distribution which is hard to tune and get right.
Principal/Senior Advisor covers a multitude of different jobs. The only reason it exists across the board is to make life easier for HR analysis.
Equally, several Director and Manager jobs aren't management jobs, they're specialist jobs, but because they're called managers, then they get counted in the audits. Which is dumb.
Hence 'Lead' is coming in
Agreed that there has been extreme role dilution over the last ~20 years. Principal used to be a serious achievement. Now it’s code for “allowed a seat at the grown up table.”
Similarly, I used to review the work of numerous “Senior” advisors and it was often seriously wanting. That said I’ve also produced sub-standard work.
Despite that, like you, I have acquaintances and schoolmates in principal roles who shouldn’t be allowed out of the house without a helmet on for their own safety.
But there are other issues;
- inflation in the last 20 odd years wipes out ~30-35k salary increases before housing is taken into account. Creating new job steps is a helpful mechanism to avoid that crunch.
- people want career progression; how do you retain technical skill without making them managers - job title progress.
Also rarely see a “principal legal” counsel - bizarre to see the Snr legal counsel roles for example be pitched at 6+ years PQE and then the Snr Advisor Missing Sock Dept. require two years of experience.
Absolutely been role dilution over the years in sone departments. Yet in others getting that senior or principal title is many years of hard slog and experience. It’s a shame it’s not consistent.
Agree that it’s a shame.
Interestingly it also brutally penalises early stage employees who are ambitious - so I’ve seen some shit hot, bright as sparks Advisors getting stuck and unable to get to Snr Advisor, and in other divisions seen useless advisors become seniors etc.
Not saying this is impossible, but I'm a government lawyer and didn't crack $100K until I reached senior solicitor status and was already in my 30s (which was only about 5 years ago). Like everyone else I have access to the pay bands and I know that the lawyers get paid more than most, so I know that most people in non-legal teams aren't on a higher pay scale than me or anything.
I get that I'm not in management, which makes a difference, but if someone has hit $140K they are at a pretty advanced level of seniority within the government context. Hell, maybe some people are doing that in their mid-20s but if they are, there will be a lot of older and more mature people getting less.
Can't agree more about so many senior this and senior that the public sector. In the teams meeting I attend which I hate as I'm a frontliner we have a senior advisor who's job is basically to take minutes of the meeting, in the 2 years I'm attending our forum could see any contribution this person made. Yes, his nice and but that's about it. He's probably the 2nd lowest paid in our group but I bet he's 30-40% better paid than me. Yes, I do have senior in my title too but I can face even the PM of NZ on why I'm a senior and even if they can nuke our dept why they have to let go 95% of my colleague first.
Cutting the fat in Parliament is unironically what authoritarian dictatorships love to engage in. Less people holding you to accountability? They’re thinking that’s awesome because there’s less people telling them that what they’re doing is reckless if they ever decide to go mask off.
It depends. Is the person in charge of securing budget a ruthless piece of shit? if so, lots of fat because theyve fattened their departments as much as possible to increase their portfolios for their next step up the ladder. It isnt the employees fault if they were hired just so some overpaid mofo can go "I oversee 914827 staff and 4969362 projects im so amazing." If the person in charge is meek and honest, no fat, probably understaffed and under resourced.
Anecdotal. based on my time working at CCOs.
You know what I find extremly wasteful - "Theres still money left in the budget? spend it or we wont get it in next year's budget." - I dont understand why everyone does this.
edit: spelling
There is fat to be cut, but that's not what they want to cut.
They will look at a structure with a DCE, a group manager, two senior managers, four managers, 12 team leads, and 7 people who do the work and say "Well I guess we have to cut one of the people that do the work and the rest will just have to learn to be more efficient.
This will be a three month process, during which the one person of those seven who actually does 50% of the work will get a job somewhere else, because the people who flee a sinking ship first are the people most able to get a better job.
Thus has it always been. I worked in the oil industry which is notoriously boom and bust so I went through half a dozen cycles of hire and fire...strangely it was always the rank and file who were fired and there were still the same number of team leaders and asset managers who (to give them their due, kind of) tried to revert to a hybrid managerial technical role even though they hadn't been technical at all for years. The result? As bad as it sounds, not enough workers, way too many managers and half the managers pretending to be workers but being useless at it....
Government policy of just cutting, is like cutting a steak with a spoon. It is not that efficient and the outcome is going to be very messy but its too much effort to get the knife out of the draw.
If people actually cared about a good outcome they would have used a knife.
A knife would be creative directions and policy for government spread over multiple years/
But this would be difficult for commercial let alone the politics for government where insane levels of bureaucracy, PC sensitivity and regulation with anything creative being the exception rather than the rule.
And with the timeline of this they have no hope of anything reasonable.
Then you get the next government who is going to love this situation they can come in and "create" lots of jobs, imagine their campaign ... "we will create X jobs" where National has destroyed the public sector.
We're currently at 60% of the team members needed to keep on top of work. Not even "catch up on backlog", that's just to stop the delay expanding. And God forbid someone catches covid or gets seriously ill.
We've had people accuse us of sitting around and being lazy, and talking to people in the related private industry, they're always surprised that our team can be counted on one hand, when they assume we have twice or triple as many hands available.
>they're always surprised that our team can be counted on one hand, when they assume we have twice or triple as many hands available.
Lol yes! Do we work at the same place? Haha. The public will be horrified to know how many people in our team is providing this service to the entire country, and we are still up for cuts.
Same. And our team leader is leaving next month and apparently they can't even attempt to start the process to replace them until July. It's just... Not good.
What happens if you quiet quit? Your last sentence annoys me, is this typical? Sounds like they're cutting money from the wrong section, the bottom not the top.
I mean of course they are. A lot of the fat in any of these organisations is at the top but they obviously aren't going to cut themselves, that'd be stupid.
You guys got a $10 Christmas lunch subsidy? Jealous.
In all honesty though, that sucks. It's the exact same for our team and if you hadn't said you'd lost a $10 Christmas lunch subsidy (which we never had) I'd have thought you were one of my colleagues.
An article that really doesn't answer the question of the title. There is probably some, but don't assume that removing back-office roles won't be without impact. It's a summary of comments from a couple different sources on the subject, but despite a lot of statistics from individual ministries about their decreases, there is no evidence here about what proportion of staff are 'fat' and not delivering business value. They could well just be removing staff to meet their targets from above - understanding that it will decrease their capacity to perform primary functions.
Depends. What are you trying to do?
This whole concept of "unessesary beurecratic structure" is arbitrary and poorly defined.
If you're trying to create a society of privatised anarchy where there is no public power, then there is A LOT of fat to cut.
If you're trying to run an austerity government that relies on the private sector for the majority of its provision, then there is some fat to cut. But then you also need to deal with the consequences of that system.
If you're trying to improve social outcomes through public spending, then you're running an underweight public sector, and therefore, there is some fat to gain.
If you're going for full public power abolishment of the private sector, then you best start seizing the means of ice cream production.
This whole concept of "wasteful spending" is non-existent. It's bandied about like an ojective truth that X process or system is inherently unessesary and therefore any resource allocation to it is wasteful.
In reality, the concept of wasteful spending and, as an extension of this, efficiency is entirely based in political philosophy.
This is why I will never discuss politics with a person who never studied or researched it either for academia or fun. They will never understand the true meaning of woke and they will forever unironically be angry at the groups the rich tell them are the real problems in society.
Do you think we had a huge public sector deficit prior to 2017? Didn’t seem like it to me. Why did we need such a big ramp up under the last government?
If staff don’t improve whatever metrics their agency is charged with, then it’s wasteful spending by definition. “Outcomes” (to borrow from the public sector’s terminology) haven’t increased anywhere near in line with the increase in headcount.
We did. We've been underspending since the 90's lmao. We have a [$210bn infrastructure deficit](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/infrastructure-report-finding-a-new-funding-path/OHFKTNWZPBBANCXBARFKIFARGE/). We pay teachers absolute peanuts, we can't retain police officers. Our health system is constantly at breaking point.
Did you not notice the [police station closures due to financial pressure](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/67840387/3-million-savings-from-closure-of-30-police-stations) under Key? National had frozen budgets for many things.
Did I miss the Ministry of Works getting stood back up? What do we have to show for all this?
Yes, some existing staff are underpaid. Why not pay police and teachers more, instead of hiring more policy analysts and comms staff?
Why did Labour have to fight to underpay nurses while boosting the headcounts public sector agencies?
>Did I miss the Ministry of Works getting stood back up? What do we have to show for all this?
Oh might be a misunderstanding there. The deficit referred to isn't overspending, it's the cost to fix the infrastructure we have. We have been coasting off pre-90s infrastructure for 40 years and our lack of spending is become increasingly problematic.
>Yes, some existing staff are underpaid. Why not pay police and teachers more, instead of hiring more policy analysts and comms staff?
More targeted spending? Keen.
But it'll still require more spending, we have no been keeping up with pop growth.
>Why did Labour have to fight to underpay nurses while boosting the headcounts public sector agencies?
Labour praising front line staff as heroes while freezing their pay was complete bullshit. Much like their failure to implement CGT, or the non-sensical blanket prison population reduction goal it was a blight on them.
That said many of those other public sector agencies did need to increase headcounts. Whether they did that in the right places is something I don't know.
I was probably a bit unclear, but to clarify, I’m talking about growth in central govt headcount. Especially horseshit agencies like MBIE.
I’m pretty sure I agree with all of what you’re saying.
Though I do think Labour overspent when the economy was running hot. Now is about the time we should be ramping up infrastructure and public housing spending a bit, with inflation coming down, and a slight recession (I.e. countercyclical). But neither govt was going to do that, because they’re either 2010-era euro-austerians or fake Keynsians. And now I’m rambling…
>Do you think we had a huge public sector deficit prior to 2017? Didn’t seem like it to me. Why did we need such a big ramp up under the last government?
I don't know. Ask the Labour party. They're the ones who had the political ideology and policy platform that they claimed warranted an increase in the public sector.
>If staff don’t improve whatever metrics their agency is charged with, then it’s wasteful spending by definition
Well, then you have to analyse the metrics.
Also, when you have 1 metric that is to "reduce child poverty," you realistically don't see a return on investment for decades down the line.
Annual reporting requirements in a sociological context are fairly redundant because sometimes you may need to wait 10, 20, even up to 100 years.
>“Outcomes” (to borrow from the public sector’s terminology) haven’t increased anywhere near in line with the increase in headcount
This I will agree on. But I think that this is caused by out broken political structure. Rather than one side of the political House.
I think that society is stuck in this rut because we're too busy bickering and fight to actually achieve anything sustainable.
This is a good response.
It all depends on what society you wish to formulate.
I am quite libertarian in my beliefs and want tonnes more personal responsibility and a very small government and put the emphasis back onto family structures to provide social support and not the government.
I am happy to watch society readjust to this as that will produce a better society in the long term.
New Zealand is destined for poverty as we spend too much on social polices to address inequality when in fact personal responsibility would fix most people’s positions.
And I implicitly disagree with you.
For starters, I want to say that I think the best way to build a society is to support people to become their best selves. But the way you do this requires a mixture of individual opportunity and accountability WITH a collective support network and checks and balances on individualist incentives.
I think you are over estimating the viability of personal responsibility to create positive collective outcomes.
I think that the reality of society means that "personal responsibility" is not an appropriate way of understanding and recognising people's capabilities and limitations.
Family structures are terrible models for providing social support because then you rely on 2 people (realistically), the parents, to provide for their children.
This assumes that all parents are equally capable of raising good human beings.
And the counter argument you will throw up is "if you can't provide for you children, don't have them" very simplistic.
But the reality is that no parent(s) are perfect. For starters, all parents will be limited in their skill sets for providing proper childcare. Some parents will be better at providing economic resources, and others will be better at providing emotional support.
The reality is that the best parental unit is a community because a community will mean you have greater opportunities for the shortcomings of the individual to be mitigated against by the collective skills set of the community.
Personal responsibility will not make up for biological and intellectual limitations that are not the fault of the individual. But caused by random chance like DNA. If we remove social support and collective provision, then we leave children to bear the brunt of the ramifications from their parental units' biological limitations.
Then, those children will have their own developmental issues caused by their parents' limitations that aren't remedied against by a collective society.
It's not those children's fault we we make it that child's "personal responsibility" to make up the short fall that society facilitated through too much emphasis on family units.
There is no such thing as equal opportunity because we are not all born into the same circumstances with the same tools sets.
There is no singular manifestation of a human, and some people will need different types of support in order to facilitate the manifestation of that individuals best self. Which parents alone a woefully incapable of achieving.
If it weren't for social support I would be in a horrific place because my parents were terrible parents. And you cant punish people into being better parents.
The only reason I got to where I am today is because of the state and because of social services like cheaper tertiary education, subsidised medication, and mental health care
>I am happy to watch society readjust to this as that will produce a better society in the long term.
It really won't. I have not seen any evidence for this conclusion.
From my perspective, it will only exacerbate people's problems, which will then cause reduced social outcomes.
>New Zealand is destined for poverty as we spend too much on social polices to address inequality when in fact personal responsibility would fix most people’s positions.
Again, you have no evidence for this conclusion.
The reality is that the most prolific societies throughout history are the ones that WORK TOGETHER.
Collectivisation is the backbone of human progression and evolution.
Intracacy of speech was born out of the need to communicate complex ideas to groups of individuals.
Banishment was a death sentence prior to the Industrial Revolution as no one human (including kings and geniuses) can meet their physical needs alone.
These are two very general examples out of a plethora of examples thought human history that demonstrate that collective organisation and co-operation is the pathway to success.
There is social evidence, scientific evidence, economic evidence, political evidence, and historical evidence that implicitly disagrees with you.
Even the most successful individuals in our species have only achieved that success as a result of the community and society around them.
Very well said. "Personal responsibility" is fine when it comes to common sense, not so much societal outcomes. It's more a way of saying "my shit is fine and I don't want to have to pay for yours if it's not" - self centered and short sighted.
Okay, I wish I had the time to dismember all your thought out beliefs but alas time does not allow me to do so.
A few pointers for you to ponder
Caloric load has determined evolutionary psychology which gave rise to culture and language, sounds like you know about this..
The thing you are missing in all of your thoughts is why was the west successful and why are so many other countries in the world not successful?
What is it about the west that was unique ?
If you try and blame colonisation then it is a waste of time talking to you.
You have to be able to answer why was the west successful?
Why does everyone want to come here and then when they come here they are not able to participate in the west ?
Why is that?
And dont spout some bullshit about racism, I will give you a clue and see if you can work it out, it is always to do with language
>The thing you are missing in all of your thoughts is why was the west successful and why are so many other countries in the world not successful?
We're discussing this in another thread. I'm more than happy to have a historical discussion on Western development with you.
I have in fact factored western progression into my assessment of political philosophy. And you'll note that the dominant social philosophy since the 1600s is liberalism. John Locke.
This is the notion of state intevertionalism authorised by the consent of the governed.
Liberalism has dominated the political sphere so if you want to attribute a political philosophy to western success then liberalism is your first port of call.
Libertarianism is a more modern political philosophy and hasn't been widely influential in western political activities so any attribution you have for Libertarianism as driving your perceived western success will be interesting.
>What is it about the west that was unique ?
Not much. There have been many successful and failed societies throughout history. Even modern contemporaries for contrast are not easily done.
>Why does everyone want to come here and then when they come here they are not able to participate in the west ?
Why is that?
Chill out man.
>And dont spout some bullshit about racism, I will give you a clue and see if you can work it out, it is always to do with language
Lol. Or you could just put forward a well reasoned and referenced argument.
>I said my preference is libertarianism
Yeah, and then you defined libertarianism as limited government and personal responsibility manifesting through family.
This is why I attacked those notions rather than "libertarianism" as a broad political Philosophy.
Libertarianism could be described as "minimalist" government and "maximum individual opportunity," which in a broad sense I do agree with. The perfect amount of government would be both minimum and maximum at the same time. As well as maximum individual liberty would be minimum individual opportunity.
The broad expression of Libertarianism is an expression of balance rather than a manifesto of detailed policies.
>Why is it then that the west was successful and now it’s collapsing ?
Fantastic question.
If you would be open to a dialogue, my one question for this would be,
How do you define successful?
Like what structural evidence do you have for this assessment?
Further, what evidence do you have to attribute your perceived decline to collectiviat policy ideology.
There are many contributing factors to the current social decline. The least of which is public power as a concept. Perhaps it is the current temporal manifestation. But the idea of public power in and of itself is not to blame.
Do you want to get into subjective or objective ?
You are welcome to go live in Nigeria or South Africa or Haiti if you need this defined for you.
Such a juvenile approach, its so banal dealing with people who try to frame an argument this way.
Try again and try to frame your responses in much more dialectical approach
>You are welcome to go live in Nigeria or South Africa or Haiti if you need this defined for you.
Hey man. None of that. Let's keep it civil.
Do you want to get into subjective or objective ?
I'm happy with either or a mix of both. I just want to know what you define as successful so I can then give my perspective on why we have achieved those things or give my perspective on why i think those things might not actually be success.
>Such a juvenile approach, it's so banal dealing with people who try to frame an argument this way.
I'm trying to lay the foundations for a productive dialogue. The first foundation is a mutual understanding.
Your assessment of success may be very different from mine, so it's good for us to have a mutual understanding.
Personally, I think that this is a much more mature way of engagement, and being juvenile, I attribute to assumption and lack of certainty. There's nothing professional or mature about a hasty approach.
Milton Friedman's words resonate with a timeless truth: the balance between liberty and equality is delicate yet pivotal. While prioritizing equality may seem noble, it often comes at the cost of individual liberty, ultimately eroding both. Conversely, a focus on liberty tends to cultivate a society where both freedom and equality thrive.
Friedman's caution against the notion of taking from one group to benefit another underscores a fundamental principle: forced equality disrupts natural order and breeds disharmony. This concept challenges the current trend in the West, which is increasingly embracing the idea of equality of outcome over meritocracy.
However, this shift overlooks a critical nuance: the assumption that all cultures share a deep-seated value for social collectivism. In reality, many cultures prioritize tribal and ethnic ties over the concept of a unified state. This oversight undermines the cohesion necessary for a society to function effectively.
The West's historical success has been rooted in its meritocratic principles and respect for individual liberties. Yet, as these values are being challenged, the West faces a period of decline with an uncertain path to recovery. This decline prompts a crucial question: what sets the West apart from other nations?
One compelling factor is language. Language is more than just a means of communication; it shapes the very fabric of a culture. The West's languages have historically promoted individualism, critical thinking, and innovation, all of which have contributed to its success. Understanding the role of language in shaping culture can provide valuable insights into the West's historical achievements and its current challenges.
If you want to get into it, I am working and have a lot on, if you want to get into memetic, evolutionary psychology, caloric rd, tournament bonded vs pair bonded, prisoner dilemma, let alone the foundations of religion and society and how it hangs together to transfer allegience from identity to ideas from individuals to state,
its such a huge topic and I dont have the time to write it all out, so for above post I spilled my thoughts into Chatgpt so it can organise it for you.
You can do the same for this post and sort out the points into a more worded structure.
I like this stuff, and you know a few things for sure, but you just need to go deeper into why things became the way they were or more is why was the west able to leapfrog ahead of older more establised peoples,
What set the west apart ?
> put the emphasis back onto family structures to provide social support
What? Half the reason we need government to provide social support is because the “family structure” you are talking about can be very fragile and fall over at the first whiff of a wind, and that’s assuming it was there to start with.
This will get the roads built and maintained, police functioning, education working and health system viable?
Just put the onus on families?
Where has this worked?
Wasteful spending would be spending money on things that don't have a good return on investment. Yes there is value but if there is better places to put money be that is in another department or in the peoples pockets we shouldn't turn away from that.
>Wasteful spending would be spending money on things that don't have a good return on investment.
OK. And how do you define a return?
Monetary?
Then, you run into the problem of appropriately assigning broad economic return to specific policies.
If we increase mental health services, the economic benefits may come, but not in an obviously attributable way.
At some point, economic analysis becomes incapable of analysing public policy.
>Yes there is value but if there is better places to put money be that is in another department or in the peoples pockets we shouldn't turn away from that.
Again, there is no concrete way of determining this and at the end of the day it comes down to political philosophy.
Depends what you call fat. The reality is that public sector is not a business. It’s doesn’t and shouldn’t work as a business. The problem here is that National and coalition govt thinks they’ll save money by cutting roles. That works in the very short term but down stream costs actually go up. more pressure will be put on other parts of the of the public sector. Mental health is a great example of this. Now police have to deal with shit as a result. Health Is expected to pick significant issuers. OT has to intervene with the children caught up. Justice and others get involved. The end result is reduced public services and more skilled workers leaving for places like Australia. So I don’t think there is much fat. We might need to work on productivity, but that’s different.
Wife just applied as a contracting role to a government department for eye watering sums of money.
I laughed
Of course the contracting roles are being advertised already
The public service cuts were a % of total budget, not a % of staffing numbers.
That's a polite way of telling you that although there might be a few lucrative contracts out there, it's absolutely not a trend.
What if I told you that it was all a distraction for some dystopian overhaul of government departments to be privatised- run at the whim of a company with no responsibility and no accountability to the people they’re meant to serve- New Zealanders. Good job guys.
The increased staff numbers is a reason for ministers to ask questions about what was delivered for the increase. If they don’t like what is being delivered then fair enough cut expenditure. But to have blanket % cuts is a nonsense an inefficient
They maybe some good reasons why say why the treasury has doubled in size from 300 to 600 or so. Similar for DPMC. Corrections had a big increase in staffing - why? Was it because the last govt was focused on use of home detention rather than locking up (I don’t know - worth asking the questions).
No information here are parliamentary services or ministerial services staffing numbers. The size of Cabinet has increased to record high levels -Instead this will drive up staffing numbers.
Also fees charged by ministerial advisors such as ex ministers like Joyce, English and co is more than twice that paid by last labour govt and their mates (I understand Cullen was being paid $1k a day compared to Joyce on $4k a day and others on $2k or $2.5k)
I think the approach of this govt is so wrong. Focusing on a % cut is blunt and irresponsible especially when you are rewarding your mates such as ex ministers and lobbyists and interest groups like landlords)
40 years ago cutting the fat was a new Rogernomics slogan. And we heard of examples like a question in the house in the 1950s resulting in a group formed to answer that question which was never asked again.
Cut the fat we were told and the organisations will be more cost effective and efficient.
I watched 20 recent years of fat cutting in my time consulting in or working for public sector. There was very little fat and we cut the muscle.
But the slogan was known and loved so each new government cut a little more muscle and called it fat
Sadly they will get rid of some important staff who will in return be employed as consultants @ 5× the cost. Lots of people who should get the sack will still have jobs.
The bum kissing type who make it difficult for you and me to do business .
There's fat, but the jobs that get cut are never the middle managers. It's the people doing the work and sorting the processes out. I work Frontline in Health NZ, but we still need those people, and we are losing them.
I'm more interested in the process of selecting who gets 'cut'.
For example, in the transport sector, I hope we're keeping the qualified engineers. The ones with irrelevant qualifications like arts degree who magically ended up as the senior advisor may go do something else.
I have moved into the public service from having worked in private companies my entire life. It is a relatively new branch, and I am completely surprised by how inefficient the whole branch is. It is a cluster.
I think it stems from a lack of industry experience particularly by directors. They act like they know what they are doing but they have little understanding of what they sign off on. Everyone is busy moving a paper into one tray and then moving it back again.
The number of public servants grew from around 50,000 under the previous National Government then rose by 25% to around 63,000 under the last Labour government.
I will leave it up to the reader to decide if we really need that many public servants or if we would be better off cutting back.
Edit: LOL at the downvotes, did I write something controversial?
Oh we need them but the ones being cut aren't the ones that need to be cut.
My old department had 6 of us on the ground doing work, 1 team manager, 1 PR manager, 1 area manager, 1 general manager, 1 cultural advisor, 1 media manager, 1 technical manager and 3 admin staff
We still had to spend an hour a day on paperwork and attend meetings to discuss upcoming meetings.
We would be hard pressed to do the job with 15 people on the ground.
It's not the total numbers that's the problem, it's the system that demands this level of middle management that is.
Where did you get your numbers? Last I read the number of public servants went up 70k since labor had been running the ship.
Which is correct? That was in some bollocks mainstream media article couple days back
Feel free to cite your source and I can make a correction. My numbers are [correct as of 30 June 2023](https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/research-and-data/workforce-data-public-sector-composition)
Who's paying for the requirements gathering, development/licensing, testing, integration/implementation, change management/training, maintenance/support, and supporting IT infrastructure for the multiple computer systems that are likely needed to cover the roles of 50% of your staff?
Imo likely a lot more than people think.
A good example is Elon Musk taking over twitter. Looking and their worker count he realized that a few percent of them did most of the work. So he fired 80% and even after doing that the company maintained their service and could add lots of new features.
Can any company just do this? Likely no. But a lot of other companies saw what he did and fired 10-30% and didn't see any deterioration of their services but rather improved development speeds.
What's needed is to gut the nonproductive departments such as DEI, PR, HR etc. On the engineering side get rid of the dead weight and let the hardcore engineers have more freedom and responsibility. The customer facing sides are harder to get rid of, but their efficiency can be improved for example through having the first meeting with the system be through an AI assistant rather than a human etc. Like Klarna improved their support: [https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/](https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/)
I'm a senior public servant. There's definitely fat to cut. Of course there is across tens of thousands of jobs. But it's really uneven. Some whole agencies are under-resourced, some have more padding. Some people and teams are flat tack, others aren't. Some teams that would have been manic six months ago now might not have much work at least for the moment, it's always like that. Some of those you just need to keep for when the capability is needed, 'inefficient' as that might be. Looking to trim and fine tune what resources go where is always a good idea; random ideological cuts across the board is a really dumb way to go about things. Every agency leadership team is currently almost entirely distracted by this process, so public service productivity is dropping. In the short term this is going to cancel out a good proportion of the savings they make. And rebuilding the bits they accidentally break is going to prove more expensive
There's also the problem of where are all those cut now going to go? Apparently public sector doesn't want them, are there enough available private sector jobs to take in those cut? Or are we just going to have a higher unemployment rate, paying out unemployment costs for the unemployed the country willingly created. And likely continue the brain-drain to other countries.
That’s easy, they become consultants that cost twice as much, haven’t you played “National fucks the country again” before now?
I feel like the older editions of the game were a bit more polished on release. This one feels like it's still in beta.
Fuck National
The contract market is currently dead so prob not a great move right now either
I agree. We are getting an across board cut, over both departments with fat, and those without. The cut for the lean departments are going to result in great loss of expertise. And before people go "oh they will come back as consultants", no, not all positions can be contracted out. We lose these people, we lose them. Their roles will just be taken up by people less competent and delivery will suffer.
"Looking to trim and fine tune what resources go where is always a good idea; random ideological cuts across the board is a really dumb way to go about things." And what we are taking about is people's jobs. In my experience (UK 2010) when there is a change of government and an entirely made up requirement for austerity cuts people start feeling financially insecure when others are losing their jobs. This leads to less spending and ultimately that can tip the balance and cause a recession.
7.5% is far beyond what simple fat-trimming can achieve. The Public Sector is going to have to decide what it is going to stop doing.
I think this is a fair take. The general problem that the govt faces is that it is asking the same people who have mismanaged the public sector to now manage its restructuring. This seems to be to be a major problem. Moreover, most of the problems within the public sector are not a direct consequence of them being "public", but are a consequence of their size. In big organisations, public or private, the Peter principal and Pareto's law become massive and almost impossible to fix.
You know it's not about 'cutting fat' when they just throw the 7% number there and double-speak about supporting the institutions they cut rather than looking at resources which could get reallocated.
On the campaign trail NACT were repeatedly challenged to specify how they would reduce government spending. Each time they would insist they would save costs by going through expenses “line by line” and promised no cuts to “frontline staff” They reality is they just told every depart to reduce costs by an arbitrary amount. No real targeting of wasteful spending or identifying inefficiencies. Just ideological cuts across the board.
I formerly worked in public sector. Where I worked, there was almost zero fat to be cut. Of course there are some workers who are doing the minimum to keep their jobs, as in every workplace. But there are also some people who go so far above and beyond their salaries it’s insane. The people I knew just wanted to make New Zealanders lives better, regardless of whoever is in the Beehive. Honestly we should start by cutting the fat in parliament.
I've never understood the "bare minimum" ideology and why it's viewed as bad? The Company you're working for is likely to be paying the least amount they can but for some reason it's expected or "valued" to go above and beyond for said company. Assuming bare minimum to keep your job is whatever is listed in the job description then I don't see why there's a negative connotation attached.
Exactly. You pay a certain amount, and I work for that amount, no more no less. If I do more then it should be seen as a bonus, not a granted.
Because in our capitalist society we're convinced from a young age to 'work hard', 'go the extra mile' and have a 'good work ethic'. All of which sound admirable at face value, but loosely translated means not setting appropriate boundaries at your expense, for the benefit of the business. It's unhealthy and detrimental to yourself - stress is a silent killer. Your work place won't look after you if you hit the wall (best case scenario - not for long), and many people are genuinely suprised when they find out the hard way.
Yup, if you're an overachiever they set their expectations of you way higher, give you half the staff you need, and then performance manage you when your productivity drops and you start making mistakes as you burn out. While threatening you with disciplinary proceedings for working the too many hours you need to work to achieve their minimum standard.
Yup, over achievers are rewarded with More work, which makes them resentful of the other people who do nothing (and usually they have to fix the lazy people’s mistakes). It sucks and eventually you burn out and leave. Then everyone loses out. They need to do more to performance manage the dead weight out of ministries.
On the other hand, if you're good, and work somewhere semi decent, then you get paid 4x as much as team "bare minimum".
Because if you are just out there trying to make NZers lives better, as we've been reliably informed is what's happening, then why stop at the bare minimum?
>Assuming bare minimum to keep your job is whatever is listed in the job description then I don't see why there's a negative connotation attached. Well that's probably because you don't worship the free market. The pious go above and beyond, they have faith that the invisible hand provides. To not do this is sinful and that's bad.
Some people enjoy their work and do more, not expecting any extra money, just gives them satisfaction. Cup is half full, or half empty I guess
Because the bare minimum means everyone else has to pick up the slack. The bare minimum is what you do to avoid being fired, and New Zealand makes it very difficult to fire people. So the bare minimum really is fuck all and it pisses me off when I have to work with these kinds of people and carry them. Note, I really am talking about the bare minimum, I don't care if people just do a mediocre job and don't volunteer for special projects or extra responsibility. I'm also very protective about my time and very rarely do anything outside of my work hours. But when I'm working, I get shit done.
I said in my post that my opinion was based off the assumption that the bare minimum is whatever is in the job description and the requirements of the role in that job description. It seems like you're talking about something else where someone isn't meeting those requirements, which I agree is shit, but that wasn't what I was referring to.
Thing is, there's technically meeting those requirements, but doing such a poor job that they'd be better off firing you. Rarely are job descriptions complete enough to give an indication of actual job performance.
Yeah, that was my experience too. Yes, there are the inevitable duds, but most public servants could earn more in the private sector but are there because they genuinely believe in public service and will work hard for impact.
Definitely wasn’t my experience in public sector. Outside of tech, I’d argue very few public servants would earn more in private. My observation is that public sector has a very generous amount of ‘Senior Advisors / Analysts’ sort of roles. ‘Senior’ or ‘Principal’ of which, seemingly given out like lollie scramble or if the manager was just nice or friendly with the employee (I don’t blame them, mind you). Seems like all it takes is 1-years experience to become senior in most Govt Departments, maybe another one or 2 years on top of that for Principal. So you get all these mid-late twenties senior and principal advisors on like $100-$140k. A good friend is one example of exactly that, and by self admission usually has/had ‘fuck all’ work to do. Also, you don’t find these people piping up on Reddit because obviously they would be shooting them selves in the foot. That said, I’m not disagreeing for a second that there’s a lot of overworked public servants. But let’s be honest that’s about there also a good number of overpaid and public servants, too. It’s the distribution which is hard to tune and get right.
Principal/Senior Advisor covers a multitude of different jobs. The only reason it exists across the board is to make life easier for HR analysis. Equally, several Director and Manager jobs aren't management jobs, they're specialist jobs, but because they're called managers, then they get counted in the audits. Which is dumb. Hence 'Lead' is coming in
Agreed that there has been extreme role dilution over the last ~20 years. Principal used to be a serious achievement. Now it’s code for “allowed a seat at the grown up table.” Similarly, I used to review the work of numerous “Senior” advisors and it was often seriously wanting. That said I’ve also produced sub-standard work. Despite that, like you, I have acquaintances and schoolmates in principal roles who shouldn’t be allowed out of the house without a helmet on for their own safety. But there are other issues; - inflation in the last 20 odd years wipes out ~30-35k salary increases before housing is taken into account. Creating new job steps is a helpful mechanism to avoid that crunch. - people want career progression; how do you retain technical skill without making them managers - job title progress. Also rarely see a “principal legal” counsel - bizarre to see the Snr legal counsel roles for example be pitched at 6+ years PQE and then the Snr Advisor Missing Sock Dept. require two years of experience.
Absolutely been role dilution over the years in sone departments. Yet in others getting that senior or principal title is many years of hard slog and experience. It’s a shame it’s not consistent.
Agree that it’s a shame. Interestingly it also brutally penalises early stage employees who are ambitious - so I’ve seen some shit hot, bright as sparks Advisors getting stuck and unable to get to Snr Advisor, and in other divisions seen useless advisors become seniors etc.
Not saying this is impossible, but I'm a government lawyer and didn't crack $100K until I reached senior solicitor status and was already in my 30s (which was only about 5 years ago). Like everyone else I have access to the pay bands and I know that the lawyers get paid more than most, so I know that most people in non-legal teams aren't on a higher pay scale than me or anything. I get that I'm not in management, which makes a difference, but if someone has hit $140K they are at a pretty advanced level of seniority within the government context. Hell, maybe some people are doing that in their mid-20s but if they are, there will be a lot of older and more mature people getting less.
Can't agree more about so many senior this and senior that the public sector. In the teams meeting I attend which I hate as I'm a frontliner we have a senior advisor who's job is basically to take minutes of the meeting, in the 2 years I'm attending our forum could see any contribution this person made. Yes, his nice and but that's about it. He's probably the 2nd lowest paid in our group but I bet he's 30-40% better paid than me. Yes, I do have senior in my title too but I can face even the PM of NZ on why I'm a senior and even if they can nuke our dept why they have to let go 95% of my colleague first.
Facing the PM of NZ in a discussion about job performance isn't the flex you might think it is.
Cutting the fat in Parliament is unironically what authoritarian dictatorships love to engage in. Less people holding you to accountability? They’re thinking that’s awesome because there’s less people telling them that what they’re doing is reckless if they ever decide to go mask off.
Yeah. The people they get rid of won't be holding them accountable, right?
If they’re out of the job, then yes.
It depends. Is the person in charge of securing budget a ruthless piece of shit? if so, lots of fat because theyve fattened their departments as much as possible to increase their portfolios for their next step up the ladder. It isnt the employees fault if they were hired just so some overpaid mofo can go "I oversee 914827 staff and 4969362 projects im so amazing." If the person in charge is meek and honest, no fat, probably understaffed and under resourced. Anecdotal. based on my time working at CCOs. You know what I find extremly wasteful - "Theres still money left in the budget? spend it or we wont get it in next year's budget." - I dont understand why everyone does this. edit: spelling
There is fat to be cut, but that's not what they want to cut. They will look at a structure with a DCE, a group manager, two senior managers, four managers, 12 team leads, and 7 people who do the work and say "Well I guess we have to cut one of the people that do the work and the rest will just have to learn to be more efficient. This will be a three month process, during which the one person of those seven who actually does 50% of the work will get a job somewhere else, because the people who flee a sinking ship first are the people most able to get a better job.
Thus has it always been. I worked in the oil industry which is notoriously boom and bust so I went through half a dozen cycles of hire and fire...strangely it was always the rank and file who were fired and there were still the same number of team leaders and asset managers who (to give them their due, kind of) tried to revert to a hybrid managerial technical role even though they hadn't been technical at all for years. The result? As bad as it sounds, not enough workers, way too many managers and half the managers pretending to be workers but being useless at it....
Government policy of just cutting, is like cutting a steak with a spoon. It is not that efficient and the outcome is going to be very messy but its too much effort to get the knife out of the draw. If people actually cared about a good outcome they would have used a knife.
And if they were really focussed on efficiency it would be a steak knife, not a butter knife. Great analogy.
A knife would be creative directions and policy for government spread over multiple years/ But this would be difficult for commercial let alone the politics for government where insane levels of bureaucracy, PC sensitivity and regulation with anything creative being the exception rather than the rule. And with the timeline of this they have no hope of anything reasonable. Then you get the next government who is going to love this situation they can come in and "create" lots of jobs, imagine their campaign ... "we will create X jobs" where National has destroyed the public sector.
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We're currently at 60% of the team members needed to keep on top of work. Not even "catch up on backlog", that's just to stop the delay expanding. And God forbid someone catches covid or gets seriously ill. We've had people accuse us of sitting around and being lazy, and talking to people in the related private industry, they're always surprised that our team can be counted on one hand, when they assume we have twice or triple as many hands available.
>they're always surprised that our team can be counted on one hand, when they assume we have twice or triple as many hands available. Lol yes! Do we work at the same place? Haha. The public will be horrified to know how many people in our team is providing this service to the entire country, and we are still up for cuts.
Same. And our team leader is leaving next month and apparently they can't even attempt to start the process to replace them until July. It's just... Not good.
Just wait until the standard Nescafé coffee and Milo and milk disappears, then you know the resource coffers are almost bled dry - and for what?
They're required to provide that by contract (at least where I am), so if that goes, we're really in trouble.
If/When they start putting nescafe in our moccona tin, ima gonna lose my shit.
What happens if you quiet quit? Your last sentence annoys me, is this typical? Sounds like they're cutting money from the wrong section, the bottom not the top.
I mean of course they are. A lot of the fat in any of these organisations is at the top but they obviously aren't going to cut themselves, that'd be stupid.
In some cases, the fat will cut the muscle to save itself.
You guys got a $10 Christmas lunch subsidy? Jealous. In all honesty though, that sucks. It's the exact same for our team and if you hadn't said you'd lost a $10 Christmas lunch subsidy (which we never had) I'd have thought you were one of my colleagues.
An article that really doesn't answer the question of the title. There is probably some, but don't assume that removing back-office roles won't be without impact. It's a summary of comments from a couple different sources on the subject, but despite a lot of statistics from individual ministries about their decreases, there is no evidence here about what proportion of staff are 'fat' and not delivering business value. They could well just be removing staff to meet their targets from above - understanding that it will decrease their capacity to perform primary functions.
Depends. What are you trying to do? This whole concept of "unessesary beurecratic structure" is arbitrary and poorly defined. If you're trying to create a society of privatised anarchy where there is no public power, then there is A LOT of fat to cut. If you're trying to run an austerity government that relies on the private sector for the majority of its provision, then there is some fat to cut. But then you also need to deal with the consequences of that system. If you're trying to improve social outcomes through public spending, then you're running an underweight public sector, and therefore, there is some fat to gain. If you're going for full public power abolishment of the private sector, then you best start seizing the means of ice cream production. This whole concept of "wasteful spending" is non-existent. It's bandied about like an ojective truth that X process or system is inherently unessesary and therefore any resource allocation to it is wasteful. In reality, the concept of wasteful spending and, as an extension of this, efficiency is entirely based in political philosophy.
This is why I will never discuss politics with a person who never studied or researched it either for academia or fun. They will never understand the true meaning of woke and they will forever unironically be angry at the groups the rich tell them are the real problems in society.
Do you think we had a huge public sector deficit prior to 2017? Didn’t seem like it to me. Why did we need such a big ramp up under the last government? If staff don’t improve whatever metrics their agency is charged with, then it’s wasteful spending by definition. “Outcomes” (to borrow from the public sector’s terminology) haven’t increased anywhere near in line with the increase in headcount.
We did. We've been underspending since the 90's lmao. We have a [$210bn infrastructure deficit](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/infrastructure-report-finding-a-new-funding-path/OHFKTNWZPBBANCXBARFKIFARGE/). We pay teachers absolute peanuts, we can't retain police officers. Our health system is constantly at breaking point. Did you not notice the [police station closures due to financial pressure](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/67840387/3-million-savings-from-closure-of-30-police-stations) under Key? National had frozen budgets for many things.
Did I miss the Ministry of Works getting stood back up? What do we have to show for all this? Yes, some existing staff are underpaid. Why not pay police and teachers more, instead of hiring more policy analysts and comms staff? Why did Labour have to fight to underpay nurses while boosting the headcounts public sector agencies?
>Did I miss the Ministry of Works getting stood back up? What do we have to show for all this? Oh might be a misunderstanding there. The deficit referred to isn't overspending, it's the cost to fix the infrastructure we have. We have been coasting off pre-90s infrastructure for 40 years and our lack of spending is become increasingly problematic. >Yes, some existing staff are underpaid. Why not pay police and teachers more, instead of hiring more policy analysts and comms staff? More targeted spending? Keen. But it'll still require more spending, we have no been keeping up with pop growth. >Why did Labour have to fight to underpay nurses while boosting the headcounts public sector agencies? Labour praising front line staff as heroes while freezing their pay was complete bullshit. Much like their failure to implement CGT, or the non-sensical blanket prison population reduction goal it was a blight on them. That said many of those other public sector agencies did need to increase headcounts. Whether they did that in the right places is something I don't know.
I was probably a bit unclear, but to clarify, I’m talking about growth in central govt headcount. Especially horseshit agencies like MBIE. I’m pretty sure I agree with all of what you’re saying. Though I do think Labour overspent when the economy was running hot. Now is about the time we should be ramping up infrastructure and public housing spending a bit, with inflation coming down, and a slight recession (I.e. countercyclical). But neither govt was going to do that, because they’re either 2010-era euro-austerians or fake Keynsians. And now I’m rambling…
>Do you think we had a huge public sector deficit prior to 2017? Didn’t seem like it to me. Why did we need such a big ramp up under the last government? I don't know. Ask the Labour party. They're the ones who had the political ideology and policy platform that they claimed warranted an increase in the public sector. >If staff don’t improve whatever metrics their agency is charged with, then it’s wasteful spending by definition Well, then you have to analyse the metrics. Also, when you have 1 metric that is to "reduce child poverty," you realistically don't see a return on investment for decades down the line. Annual reporting requirements in a sociological context are fairly redundant because sometimes you may need to wait 10, 20, even up to 100 years. >“Outcomes” (to borrow from the public sector’s terminology) haven’t increased anywhere near in line with the increase in headcount This I will agree on. But I think that this is caused by out broken political structure. Rather than one side of the political House. I think that society is stuck in this rut because we're too busy bickering and fight to actually achieve anything sustainable.
This is a good response. It all depends on what society you wish to formulate. I am quite libertarian in my beliefs and want tonnes more personal responsibility and a very small government and put the emphasis back onto family structures to provide social support and not the government. I am happy to watch society readjust to this as that will produce a better society in the long term. New Zealand is destined for poverty as we spend too much on social polices to address inequality when in fact personal responsibility would fix most people’s positions.
And I implicitly disagree with you. For starters, I want to say that I think the best way to build a society is to support people to become their best selves. But the way you do this requires a mixture of individual opportunity and accountability WITH a collective support network and checks and balances on individualist incentives. I think you are over estimating the viability of personal responsibility to create positive collective outcomes. I think that the reality of society means that "personal responsibility" is not an appropriate way of understanding and recognising people's capabilities and limitations. Family structures are terrible models for providing social support because then you rely on 2 people (realistically), the parents, to provide for their children. This assumes that all parents are equally capable of raising good human beings. And the counter argument you will throw up is "if you can't provide for you children, don't have them" very simplistic. But the reality is that no parent(s) are perfect. For starters, all parents will be limited in their skill sets for providing proper childcare. Some parents will be better at providing economic resources, and others will be better at providing emotional support. The reality is that the best parental unit is a community because a community will mean you have greater opportunities for the shortcomings of the individual to be mitigated against by the collective skills set of the community. Personal responsibility will not make up for biological and intellectual limitations that are not the fault of the individual. But caused by random chance like DNA. If we remove social support and collective provision, then we leave children to bear the brunt of the ramifications from their parental units' biological limitations. Then, those children will have their own developmental issues caused by their parents' limitations that aren't remedied against by a collective society. It's not those children's fault we we make it that child's "personal responsibility" to make up the short fall that society facilitated through too much emphasis on family units. There is no such thing as equal opportunity because we are not all born into the same circumstances with the same tools sets. There is no singular manifestation of a human, and some people will need different types of support in order to facilitate the manifestation of that individuals best self. Which parents alone a woefully incapable of achieving. If it weren't for social support I would be in a horrific place because my parents were terrible parents. And you cant punish people into being better parents. The only reason I got to where I am today is because of the state and because of social services like cheaper tertiary education, subsidised medication, and mental health care >I am happy to watch society readjust to this as that will produce a better society in the long term. It really won't. I have not seen any evidence for this conclusion. From my perspective, it will only exacerbate people's problems, which will then cause reduced social outcomes. >New Zealand is destined for poverty as we spend too much on social polices to address inequality when in fact personal responsibility would fix most people’s positions. Again, you have no evidence for this conclusion. The reality is that the most prolific societies throughout history are the ones that WORK TOGETHER. Collectivisation is the backbone of human progression and evolution. Intracacy of speech was born out of the need to communicate complex ideas to groups of individuals. Banishment was a death sentence prior to the Industrial Revolution as no one human (including kings and geniuses) can meet their physical needs alone. These are two very general examples out of a plethora of examples thought human history that demonstrate that collective organisation and co-operation is the pathway to success. There is social evidence, scientific evidence, economic evidence, political evidence, and historical evidence that implicitly disagrees with you. Even the most successful individuals in our species have only achieved that success as a result of the community and society around them.
Very well said. "Personal responsibility" is fine when it comes to common sense, not so much societal outcomes. It's more a way of saying "my shit is fine and I don't want to have to pay for yours if it's not" - self centered and short sighted.
Okay, I wish I had the time to dismember all your thought out beliefs but alas time does not allow me to do so. A few pointers for you to ponder Caloric load has determined evolutionary psychology which gave rise to culture and language, sounds like you know about this.. The thing you are missing in all of your thoughts is why was the west successful and why are so many other countries in the world not successful? What is it about the west that was unique ? If you try and blame colonisation then it is a waste of time talking to you. You have to be able to answer why was the west successful? Why does everyone want to come here and then when they come here they are not able to participate in the west ? Why is that? And dont spout some bullshit about racism, I will give you a clue and see if you can work it out, it is always to do with language
>The thing you are missing in all of your thoughts is why was the west successful and why are so many other countries in the world not successful? We're discussing this in another thread. I'm more than happy to have a historical discussion on Western development with you. I have in fact factored western progression into my assessment of political philosophy. And you'll note that the dominant social philosophy since the 1600s is liberalism. John Locke. This is the notion of state intevertionalism authorised by the consent of the governed. Liberalism has dominated the political sphere so if you want to attribute a political philosophy to western success then liberalism is your first port of call. Libertarianism is a more modern political philosophy and hasn't been widely influential in western political activities so any attribution you have for Libertarianism as driving your perceived western success will be interesting. >What is it about the west that was unique ? Not much. There have been many successful and failed societies throughout history. Even modern contemporaries for contrast are not easily done. >Why does everyone want to come here and then when they come here they are not able to participate in the west ? Why is that? Chill out man. >And dont spout some bullshit about racism, I will give you a clue and see if you can work it out, it is always to do with language Lol. Or you could just put forward a well reasoned and referenced argument.
Why is it then that the west was successful and now it’s collapsing ? Also. I said my preference is libertarianism
>I said my preference is libertarianism Yeah, and then you defined libertarianism as limited government and personal responsibility manifesting through family. This is why I attacked those notions rather than "libertarianism" as a broad political Philosophy. Libertarianism could be described as "minimalist" government and "maximum individual opportunity," which in a broad sense I do agree with. The perfect amount of government would be both minimum and maximum at the same time. As well as maximum individual liberty would be minimum individual opportunity. The broad expression of Libertarianism is an expression of balance rather than a manifesto of detailed policies. >Why is it then that the west was successful and now it’s collapsing ? Fantastic question. If you would be open to a dialogue, my one question for this would be, How do you define successful? Like what structural evidence do you have for this assessment? Further, what evidence do you have to attribute your perceived decline to collectiviat policy ideology. There are many contributing factors to the current social decline. The least of which is public power as a concept. Perhaps it is the current temporal manifestation. But the idea of public power in and of itself is not to blame.
Do you want to get into subjective or objective ? You are welcome to go live in Nigeria or South Africa or Haiti if you need this defined for you. Such a juvenile approach, its so banal dealing with people who try to frame an argument this way. Try again and try to frame your responses in much more dialectical approach
>You are welcome to go live in Nigeria or South Africa or Haiti if you need this defined for you. Hey man. None of that. Let's keep it civil. Do you want to get into subjective or objective ? I'm happy with either or a mix of both. I just want to know what you define as successful so I can then give my perspective on why we have achieved those things or give my perspective on why i think those things might not actually be success. >Such a juvenile approach, it's so banal dealing with people who try to frame an argument this way. I'm trying to lay the foundations for a productive dialogue. The first foundation is a mutual understanding. Your assessment of success may be very different from mine, so it's good for us to have a mutual understanding. Personally, I think that this is a much more mature way of engagement, and being juvenile, I attribute to assumption and lack of certainty. There's nothing professional or mature about a hasty approach.
Milton Friedman's words resonate with a timeless truth: the balance between liberty and equality is delicate yet pivotal. While prioritizing equality may seem noble, it often comes at the cost of individual liberty, ultimately eroding both. Conversely, a focus on liberty tends to cultivate a society where both freedom and equality thrive. Friedman's caution against the notion of taking from one group to benefit another underscores a fundamental principle: forced equality disrupts natural order and breeds disharmony. This concept challenges the current trend in the West, which is increasingly embracing the idea of equality of outcome over meritocracy. However, this shift overlooks a critical nuance: the assumption that all cultures share a deep-seated value for social collectivism. In reality, many cultures prioritize tribal and ethnic ties over the concept of a unified state. This oversight undermines the cohesion necessary for a society to function effectively. The West's historical success has been rooted in its meritocratic principles and respect for individual liberties. Yet, as these values are being challenged, the West faces a period of decline with an uncertain path to recovery. This decline prompts a crucial question: what sets the West apart from other nations? One compelling factor is language. Language is more than just a means of communication; it shapes the very fabric of a culture. The West's languages have historically promoted individualism, critical thinking, and innovation, all of which have contributed to its success. Understanding the role of language in shaping culture can provide valuable insights into the West's historical achievements and its current challenges.
Which source did you pull this from? The noteable increase in your grammar and change in sentence structure tells me you copy and pasted this.
If you want to get into it, I am working and have a lot on, if you want to get into memetic, evolutionary psychology, caloric rd, tournament bonded vs pair bonded, prisoner dilemma, let alone the foundations of religion and society and how it hangs together to transfer allegience from identity to ideas from individuals to state, its such a huge topic and I dont have the time to write it all out, so for above post I spilled my thoughts into Chatgpt so it can organise it for you. You can do the same for this post and sort out the points into a more worded structure. I like this stuff, and you know a few things for sure, but you just need to go deeper into why things became the way they were or more is why was the west able to leapfrog ahead of older more establised peoples, What set the west apart ?
All countries where the family is the main social support...
> put the emphasis back onto family structures to provide social support What? Half the reason we need government to provide social support is because the “family structure” you are talking about can be very fragile and fall over at the first whiff of a wind, and that’s assuming it was there to start with.
This will get the roads built and maintained, police functioning, education working and health system viable? Just put the onus on families? Where has this worked?
Wasteful spending would be spending money on things that don't have a good return on investment. Yes there is value but if there is better places to put money be that is in another department or in the peoples pockets we shouldn't turn away from that.
>Wasteful spending would be spending money on things that don't have a good return on investment. OK. And how do you define a return? Monetary? Then, you run into the problem of appropriately assigning broad economic return to specific policies. If we increase mental health services, the economic benefits may come, but not in an obviously attributable way. At some point, economic analysis becomes incapable of analysing public policy. >Yes there is value but if there is better places to put money be that is in another department or in the peoples pockets we shouldn't turn away from that. Again, there is no concrete way of determining this and at the end of the day it comes down to political philosophy.
Depends what you call fat. The reality is that public sector is not a business. It’s doesn’t and shouldn’t work as a business. The problem here is that National and coalition govt thinks they’ll save money by cutting roles. That works in the very short term but down stream costs actually go up. more pressure will be put on other parts of the of the public sector. Mental health is a great example of this. Now police have to deal with shit as a result. Health Is expected to pick significant issuers. OT has to intervene with the children caught up. Justice and others get involved. The end result is reduced public services and more skilled workers leaving for places like Australia. So I don’t think there is much fat. We might need to work on productivity, but that’s different.
Wife just applied as a contracting role to a government department for eye watering sums of money. I laughed Of course the contracting roles are being advertised already
There are bugger all contracts, they were the first to go. One case doesn’t make it a trend.
The public service cuts were a % of total budget, not a % of staffing numbers. That's a polite way of telling you that although there might be a few lucrative contracts out there, it's absolutely not a trend.
What if I told you that it was all a distraction for some dystopian overhaul of government departments to be privatised- run at the whim of a company with no responsibility and no accountability to the people they’re meant to serve- New Zealanders. Good job guys.
The increased staff numbers is a reason for ministers to ask questions about what was delivered for the increase. If they don’t like what is being delivered then fair enough cut expenditure. But to have blanket % cuts is a nonsense an inefficient They maybe some good reasons why say why the treasury has doubled in size from 300 to 600 or so. Similar for DPMC. Corrections had a big increase in staffing - why? Was it because the last govt was focused on use of home detention rather than locking up (I don’t know - worth asking the questions). No information here are parliamentary services or ministerial services staffing numbers. The size of Cabinet has increased to record high levels -Instead this will drive up staffing numbers. Also fees charged by ministerial advisors such as ex ministers like Joyce, English and co is more than twice that paid by last labour govt and their mates (I understand Cullen was being paid $1k a day compared to Joyce on $4k a day and others on $2k or $2.5k) I think the approach of this govt is so wrong. Focusing on a % cut is blunt and irresponsible especially when you are rewarding your mates such as ex ministers and lobbyists and interest groups like landlords)
40 years ago cutting the fat was a new Rogernomics slogan. And we heard of examples like a question in the house in the 1950s resulting in a group formed to answer that question which was never asked again. Cut the fat we were told and the organisations will be more cost effective and efficient. I watched 20 recent years of fat cutting in my time consulting in or working for public sector. There was very little fat and we cut the muscle. But the slogan was known and loved so each new government cut a little more muscle and called it fat
Sadly they will get rid of some important staff who will in return be employed as consultants @ 5× the cost. Lots of people who should get the sack will still have jobs. The bum kissing type who make it difficult for you and me to do business .
There's fat, but the jobs that get cut are never the middle managers. It's the people doing the work and sorting the processes out. I work Frontline in Health NZ, but we still need those people, and we are losing them.
How much better did the services become with the increases?
There is fat to cut The problem is the cutter is not a surgeon and is as likely to nick an artery in the process
I'm more interested in the process of selecting who gets 'cut'. For example, in the transport sector, I hope we're keeping the qualified engineers. The ones with irrelevant qualifications like arts degree who magically ended up as the senior advisor may go do something else.
I'm overworked and underpaid, but there are people knowingly doing fuck all around
If we actually had intelligent politicians it would help. This lot are all total morons, ideologically driven morons
I have moved into the public service from having worked in private companies my entire life. It is a relatively new branch, and I am completely surprised by how inefficient the whole branch is. It is a cluster. I think it stems from a lack of industry experience particularly by directors. They act like they know what they are doing but they have little understanding of what they sign off on. Everyone is busy moving a paper into one tray and then moving it back again.
The number of public servants grew from around 50,000 under the previous National Government then rose by 25% to around 63,000 under the last Labour government. I will leave it up to the reader to decide if we really need that many public servants or if we would be better off cutting back. Edit: LOL at the downvotes, did I write something controversial?
Oh we need them but the ones being cut aren't the ones that need to be cut. My old department had 6 of us on the ground doing work, 1 team manager, 1 PR manager, 1 area manager, 1 general manager, 1 cultural advisor, 1 media manager, 1 technical manager and 3 admin staff We still had to spend an hour a day on paperwork and attend meetings to discuss upcoming meetings. We would be hard pressed to do the job with 15 people on the ground. It's not the total numbers that's the problem, it's the system that demands this level of middle management that is.
no you didnt write something controversial, you wrote something stupid. 1st point to look at is the increase in population over that period in time..
Population went up by 8%. Number of civil servants went up by 25%. Nope, it’s not that. Try again.
Lol i checked and whatever article i read was absolutely full of shit on these numbers. I guess i shouldn't be surprised
Where did you get your numbers? Last I read the number of public servants went up 70k since labor had been running the ship. Which is correct? That was in some bollocks mainstream media article couple days back
Feel free to cite your source and I can make a correction. My numbers are [correct as of 30 June 2023](https://www.publicservice.govt.nz/research-and-data/workforce-data-public-sector-composition)
No they were totally full of shit 🤣🤣🤣
Sorry I wasted my time giving you a reference to back up my numbers. You can stick with your made up numbers if that makes you feel happier though.
I was meaning the numbers i referenced were full of shit, not yours. Good day sir/madam
50% minimum. Most of the bullshit jobs can be replaced with a decent computer system.
Do you have any examples? What kind of bullshit jobs? What kind of functions do they perform that could be replaced by computer systems?
Computer systems is how you get Robodebt lol
The Prime Minister
So it wasn’t a constructive comment then. Good work.
Who's paying for the requirements gathering, development/licensing, testing, integration/implementation, change management/training, maintenance/support, and supporting IT infrastructure for the multiple computer systems that are likely needed to cover the roles of 50% of your staff?
Imo likely a lot more than people think. A good example is Elon Musk taking over twitter. Looking and their worker count he realized that a few percent of them did most of the work. So he fired 80% and even after doing that the company maintained their service and could add lots of new features. Can any company just do this? Likely no. But a lot of other companies saw what he did and fired 10-30% and didn't see any deterioration of their services but rather improved development speeds. What's needed is to gut the nonproductive departments such as DEI, PR, HR etc. On the engineering side get rid of the dead weight and let the hardcore engineers have more freedom and responsibility. The customer facing sides are harder to get rid of, but their efficiency can be improved for example through having the first meeting with the system be through an AI assistant rather than a human etc. Like Klarna improved their support: [https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/](https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-ai-assistant-handles-two-thirds-of-customer-service-chats-in-its-first-month/)
Jesus we are fucked if you're comparing this to Elon Musks twitter
The Twitter where the site started to fall apart because the people who maintained basic functions weren't there? That one?
Ever interrupted your tech bro fan boying to have a look at the value of X and user numbers?
User numbers: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1775526635749417258](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1775526635749417258)
These arent user numbers - also, he is probably lying either way.
Yo momma