Venu Menon
Wellington, August 22,2023
The National-ACT alliance has pledged to take the axe to the public service in Wellington if it is elected in October.
That threat means dismantling a sector that employs around 62,710 staff at 37 government departments and departmental agencies nationally, as of 31 March 2023.
Of these, almost half are based in Wellington.
That makes the government the capital’s single biggest employer.
The Opposition alliance’s plan to stem the bureaucratic bloat by slashing public service jobs is expected to have a flow-on effect on Wellington’s economy.
Sunil Gandhi, for instance, who owns a convenience cum Lotto outlet at the arcade on Molesworth Street (close to Parliament) has a loyal clientele that consists largely of staff working in government offices in the area. Customer flow to his and other outlets at the mall dropped following the road closures and police cordons around Parliament during the protest by anti-vaxxers in March 2022.
With officegoers forced to work from home during the protest, Gandhi suffered substantial revenue loss.
Gandhi’s is not an isolated case. Scores of businesses have been impacted by people working from home.
Cutting public service numbers will bring back the spectre of dwindling customer flow, business owners in the CBD fear.
It could backfire in other ways too, critics say. It would lead to more contractors and consultants being hired, about which National’s Christopher Luxon has routinely criticised the Labour government.
But, as of September 2022, Wellington’s bureaucrats earn on an average $ 92,900 , as per Stats NZ data.
The national average is under $ 70,000.
That’s not all. A big chunk of the commercial real estate in Wellington’s CBD is occupied by the government, with new office spaces under construction, local media reports indicate.
A fall in demand for office space will impact businesses, such as cafes and restaurants, buoyed by a customer base consisting of public servants and the floating population of the CBD.
Trade union bodies reckon cutting jobs in the public service would draw fewer people to the CBD and cause property prices to fall. The consequences will be uneven across the social spectrum, with already marginalised sections hit hardest.
Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau is vocal in her support of the city’s public servants, and sees the proposed job cuts as a “step back to the hardships of the Covid days.”
But none of this inhibits National or ACT in their intent to shake up the public service if they find themselves in a position to do so. While neither National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis nor the party’s public service spokesperson Simeon Brown is open about the specifics of their party’s plan, ACT’s David Seymour has adopted a swashbuckling posture and wants the public service headcount to go back to 47,000 fulltime workers (as opposed to 60,381 fulltime workers as of June 2022).
Seymour told a gathering in Wellington on Sunday that he wanted public service salaries to be linked to performance.
Clearly, Seymour is amplifying his constant refrain on the floor of Parliament that the Labour government has been on a spending spree and that it is up to ACT, in alliance with National, to rein in that reckless spending.
But it is conceivable that others might share Mayor Whanau’s view that “public servants know that they are an easy target.”
“Their job security is subject to ideological changes that come with the election cycle. I do feel for them at such an uncertain time,” the mayor is quoted as saying.
But ideology is a key driver in the upcoming general election. If the National-ACT alliance is looking to engineer a shift away from Labour’s left-leaning economic policies, it also does not want the pendulum to swing too far to the right.
The alliance is pitching its campaign around the Labour government’s ‘profligate spending’ and challenging it to balance its books.
But it should come as no surprise if the National-ACT combine steers within the perimeter of Labour’s fiscal policies, should the election go its way in October.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
