With an unwitting assist from Rob Campbell and Steve Maharey, the National leader has made the state of the public service an election issue, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
How the cost of consultants dominated the political week
When Christopher Luxon announced a National government would introduce a child care rebate last Sunday, it was seen as a strike behind enemy lines, a policy attached to the cost of living crisis and made to appeal to women. Yet the real attack might not be the money National plans to spend on early childhood education, but how it plans to save money by cutting the number of consultants and contractors in the public service. As Toby Manhire writes this morning, Luxon and his team reckoned “they could save $400 million by derailing the gravy train, and they were radiantly confident people were going to like it”.
Public sector workers may actually end up with pay bump
National’s focus turned a spotlight onto the pay packets of those who aren’t on the consulting wicket. In the wake of the Rob Campbell saga, the failed TVNZ/RNZ merger, and the Steve Maharey scandal that wasn’t, Newshub found that hundreds of public sector workers received a pay rise last year, despite a supposed pay freeze for those earning over $100,000. Luxon thinks the pay freeze – more accurately a “wage restraint guidance”, as prime minister Chris Hipkins has pointed out – isn’t working, and those in senior positions may in fact need to be paid more to help retain and recruit the best performers.
‘An administrative revolution’
Luxon believes we’re spending a lot and “not getting good outcomes”. Last year Danyl Mclauchlan argued that the government’s managerial class – its analysts, managers, comms staff and consultants – had grown dangerously bloated. It wasn’t only departmental spending priorities that were to blame, Mclauchlan wrote, but also the entire political sphere that Labour had cultivated – one that was “increasingly therapeutic rather than material”, which emphasised “the politics of personal self-esteem, emotional wellbeing, self-expression, self validation [and] relentless positivity”.
The Public Service Association, meanwhile, has responded to Luxon’s claims by pointing out that New Zealand’s public service is proportionally the same size as that of the UK and Australia, and that NZ spends a lower percentage of GDP on public services than those nations. “We do agree with Mr Luxon on one point, he cites the need to use fewer consultants and ‘build that capability in-house’, but how is that possible when National plans to cut the public service?” said national secretary Kerry Davies.
A great week for Luxon – minus some stumbles and a concerning favorability poll result
Luxon might be onto a winner with the consultants line of attack, but the week wasn’t without its issues. On Wednesday, he mixed up the Ministry of Health and Te Whatu Ora, the organisation that former chair Rob Campbell claimed employed more than 200 comms people. A Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll released yesterday shows Labour pulling ahead of National in the poll for the first time in a year. While Luxon’s net favourability has increased by three points from -5% to -2%, Hipkins is at +33%, up six points from last month. Still, as Manhire suggests, this was the week National seized back the initiative, with a template on how to set the agenda. Barring any unforeseen disasters today, it’ll be “the National Party’s best week – or at least most effective – of the 66 since Christopher Luxon became leader,” writes Manhire.