Election 2023: Seymour, Act will ‘stop work’ on wasteful projects, cut public service jobs

Act leader David Seymour says the public service needs to "stop work" on wasteful projects. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Act Party wants to dramatically reduce the headcount of the public service if it is in government after the election, by ordering ministries to immediately stop work on projects it wants to axe.

Act leader David Seymour promised this morning to issue “stop work notices” to public sector chief executives on day one of a government.

He claims this will “save up to $1 billion on day one of the next government”.

The “stop work” idea works by asking ministers to take proposals to Cabinet to immediately “stop work” on projects the Government disagrees with (Seymour acknowledges this would not happen the first day of the government being formed, but early on in the government’s life).

Once Cabinet agrees to axe those projects, orders are issued to government departments to immediately “stop work” on them. Staff are then posted elsewhere in the department or made redundant.

Money that had been appropriated for those projects but unspent would be returned to the centre - Wellington-speak for banking the unspent money.

Seymour said ministries would be able to reallocate staff “if there is a legitimate thing for them to do”.

However, he said that was “unlikely because the objective is to reduce the headcount”.

He acknowledged that making redundancies in the public sector would mean some paying people out unused leave and other entitlements, but said this was ultimately worth it for the goal of reducing the headcount.

“There’s potential that you’re actually gonna have to pay a person out for an average of a couple of months to get to where you want to get to, but compared with the cost of many of these policies, that’s a small price to pay,” he said.

Act reckoned it could reduce the staff at MBIE by 50 per cent using stop-work notices.

A press release from the party noted that as of March 2023, MBIE employed 6123 fulltime equivalents and spent $74.1 million on contractors and consultants in the nine months prior.

Seymour compared this to June 2018, when MBIE had 3723 staff.

Other things in line for the chop are Three Waters, He Waka Eke Noa, Auckland Light Rail, Fees-Free and the Provincial Growth Fund.

The second part of the policy would require departments, in their briefings to the incoming minister (BIM), to outline in detail the teams getting government funding.

A BIM is a document every new minister receives which sets out what their portfolio entails.

Act wants its BIMs to contain three key details:

• The teams that sit within ministries and departments.
• The activities the teams do and the outputs they produce.
• A breakdown of expenditure on the teams and activities.

Seymour said ministers would use that information to “identify teams and activities they require departments to cut because they aren’t providing value for taxpayers or because they overlap with functions that exist elsewhere in the bureaucracy”.

“The next Government needs to take on the bureaucracy from day one and defund failing programmes that aren’t delivering for taxpayers,” Seymour said.