OPINION

The Government is swinging the axe hard, cutting more than 1000 state sector jobs in a single day yesterday. Even with these cuts, the state sector will still be larger than in 2017 when Labour took office. The Government should, and indeed must, cut more:

The Ministry of Education has proposed to slash 565 jobs.

Combined with proposed cuts today announced at Oranga Tamariki, the children’s ministry, it takes the public sector cuts announced today to more than 1000.

In a statement, the Public Service Association (PSA), a union representing public servants, many of whom are in the firing line, said the Ministry of Education job cull represents 12 per cent of the ministry’s workforce.

NZ Herald

Stuff has been keeping a running total:

The axe is falling on the public service, with major job cuts looming in the weeks and months ahead.

As of April 17, Stuff had confirmed that 3001 roles have been – or are proposed to be – disestablished, as part of the cost savings drive.

This week, Stuff has updates on cuts to Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Education and MBIE.

On Wednesday, both Oranga Tamariki and the Ministry of Education announced plans to layoff a combined 1012 staff.

Stuff

The whining is weapons grade, but the ACT Party is hitting back on X (formerly Twitter):

These cuts are a good start but still rather timid and they’re nowhere near getting the state sector back to 2017 levels. The Labour Government and their lickspittles in the state sector have gorged themselves with the lax fiscal controls exhibited by Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins.

Speaking of Chris Hipkins, the Taxpayers’ Union gave him a swift kick in the cods over his wailing about job losses:

The ACT Party has it right: the state sector exists to serve the Government, not enrich the cafe sector of Wellington.

Get the axe out and start chopping some more.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...