Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Camilla Belich: Labour's Public Services Spokesperson on the Government's proposed overhaul

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Camilla Belich: Labour's Public Services Spokesperson on the Government's proposed overhaul · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So government wants to debloat the public service. Nine thousand
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: redundancies two point four billion dollars in savings take us
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: down to fifty five thousand full time public servants by
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: July of twenty twenty nine.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: This is actually about giving public servants the opportunity to
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: do their work better. They want to serve New Zealanders
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: in a more joined out modern way.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Nick Carmel about Wich is with US Labor spokesperson for
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Public Services, come in a good morning.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So is one percent of the population roughly public servants?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Is that bad?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Well, we have a significantly larger number of public servants
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: than one percent at the moment. And so what we
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: don't know is what frontline services will be affected by this.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We don't know what services that New Zealanders currently expect
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: from their current public services that will be affected, and
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: we don't know what jobs these are. So it's a
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: really arbitrary target. I suppose that the government has decided
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: to put on the public service and it's going to
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: affect every region in New Zealand. I mean, it's a
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: significant number of jobs that the government is going to
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: cut at the same time as we've got decade high
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: levels of unemployment and this is going to unfortunately hurt
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Kivy families and also at the businesses that they utilize.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Camelo, you've been very careful with your language and you
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: are basically describing what is going to happen rather than
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: criticizing it. Do you actually think there is good reason
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: in some cases to go ahead with these cuts?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I think the issue with this particular proposal that the
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: government has put forward is the fact that there is
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: no detail on what they're actually going to do, so
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: that is definitely a criticism. And the fact that it's
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: such a significant cut to the public service. I mean,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: of course that throughout various governments, throughout the last Labor government,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: throughout previous governments, we've always had certain restructurings. Obviously there's
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: been redundancies for some people, but not on a scale
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: like this year after year. I mean, we have to
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: really understand that what the government is proposing is quite
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a significant, huge change that every New Zealander will see.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is a move towards austerity really in
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: the public service. So I think that's the scale of it,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and the fact that we don't know what we're losing
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: in terms of the detail is really really consistent.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Can you call it austerity if they're putting the money
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: into health and education? I mean, should you not be
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: celebrating that aspect of it? If we can save in
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the back office, put it to the front line, good
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: news story.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I just don't think that there's enough information to be
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: able to say that it's going to be redeployed in
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: a way that is more positive than it is at
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the moment. I mean, it's just almost unbelievable what they've
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: proposed in terms of the scale of the reduction and
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: the timeframe that they say that they want to have
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: debt done, and when we've had big restructurings in the past,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: and you know, there was a smaller two percent reduction
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: under the last labor government, and we've had significant reductions
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: already under this government. So that's the context that we're
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: looking at here.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: You're not convinced. You're not convinced, Carmela. I've got time
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: for one answer, well, basically a one word answer on this.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: When the last gave them get labor government increased spending
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: by seventy percent, you know, triple spending in real terms,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in nominal terms double debt. What's one thing that we
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: got better out of the public service?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Well, we and I know that this is maybe something
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: that people don't usually bring up, but the reason that
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: there was a huge amount of spending under the last
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Labor government as we suffered through a historic pandemic and
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: we had to save lives, and that was the decision
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: that the the government decided to make, was to prioritize debt,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: and that was one of the reasons that there was
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: increased spending and spending that we hadn't otherwise anticipated. So
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: saving thousands of lives is certainly an objective that I
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: think in a certainly a takeaway that I think from
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: my perspective that we can be proud of and we
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: can look at that spending and say that that was
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: put towards a good cause.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: All right, coming about it, Labor Spokespersons for Public Services.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 4:31
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• 4:34
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