"Finance Minister Nicola Willis ... and Public Service Minister Paul Goldsmith revealed earlier today that the core public service could be brought down to about 55,000 staff, a level they described as the historic norm of roughly 1% of the population, with a sinking lid policy."
#JustinHu, 2026
This is managerialism on steroids. It gets worse, but let's stay with this for a minute.
(1/?)
As I've explained here at length, firing public servants while unemployment is rising is an illusory saving. Because for each one you fire, a big chunk of their salary is still paid as an unemployment benefit.
Then there's the fact that the cost of hiring "consultants" when the fired public servants' work can't be left undone wipes out any savings that are left. It can even cost the public more than having this expertise on retainer.
But I don't want to harp on about this today.
(2/?)
Because to add idiocy to injury,
"The Government's Chief Digital Officer will oversee investment in digital systems to move human resources, payroll, case management and other systems to the cloud and to embed AI deployment as a basic expectation for all public entities.
We’re going to ensure government is fully on board the digitisation and AI revolutions sweeping the world."
#NicolaWillis, 2026
(3/?)
That's right, just as most governments are developing strategies to exit "the cloud" and "AI" (ie proprietary platforms owned by US technofascists), NatACT First are leaning in 🤦♂️
It's hard to know where to start on this. It's such an obviously bad idea I instinctively want to check this article wasn't published on April 1.
(4/4)
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