Goldsmith Paul: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Goldsmith Paul: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:678;Page:888] 
2. 
PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What reports has he received on the performance of the public service? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 Today Treasury released a report on benchmarking back-office functions in 31 State agencies. The report shows that in many instances the costs of functions like property management human resources and information and communications technology are higher than international benchmarks and higher than the costs of similar Government agencies in New Zealand. The report concludes that savings of about $250 million could be made if poorer-performing agencies raised their performance to the agency median. Last year we announced that starting from 1 July this year agencies will be required to find $980 million of savings over 3 years. They have had a couple of years of looking at this data to understand their own organisations and work out what decisions to make and now they are starting to make those decisions. 
Paul Goldsmith 
: Why is improving the performance of the Public Service important? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Simply because New Zealanders expect a good level of public services. We owe it to many vulnerable New Zealanders who are totally dependent on our public services to do a good job and in a time when money is tight we are making every effort to ensure we can continue to deliver a good level of public services even if that has to be done with less money. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Does he stand by the Prime Minister’s statement: “Let me reiterate National’s position. We are in no way going to reduce the number of frontline staff. Let me make this absolutely clear. Under National the numbers of doctors nurses teachers social workers police and other frontline staff will grow.”; and if so how does he reconcile that statement with the recent news that the district health boards are looking to shed medical staff education officials are considering increasing class sizes the police are looking to reduce the number of staff the Housing New Zealand Corporation is laying off staff and replacing them with a call centre and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is reducing consular services and replacing them with an 0800 number as well? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Yes I do stand by the Prime Minister’s statement because since he became Prime Minister there have been 600 additional front-line police 1600 extra teachers over 2000 more nurses and allied health staff and 800 more doctors working in our public health service. But unlike the previous Government this Government is interested in whether those extra staff are achieving what we want them to achieve and if extra staff are fulfilling administrative functions that are unnecessary then we are likely to try to move those resources to the front line. 
Paul Goldsmith 
: What progress has been made in reducing back-office costs? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The benchmarking exercise released today shows that there has been moderate progress so far but that is because the Government has followed a sensible course of action where after years of getting as much money as they could spend in most cases they needed a couple of years to understand their own organisations so that they could then make sensible decisions about savings. So this Government resisted the temptation of rushing in and grabbing large savings from agencies over its first term of office but now that the agencies have understood how their services work and which bits matter they can now make sensible decisions to maintain public services and save money. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Does he stand by the Prime Minister’s statement that a “National Government is not going to radically reorganise the public sector. … Few problems are solved by significant reorganisations—in fact many more tend to be created.”; and if so how does he reconcile that statement with the reality of 2500 job losses multiple departmental mergers the closure of regional offices and his promise today of yet more to come? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Yes I do stand by the Prime Minister’s statement and the Government has actually not gone for large-scale structural reform. What we have done is work through with the Public Service a better understanding of its own organisations. We have put a strong focus on maintaining public service on developing the leadership needed to make change and on giving them the tools to do it. The time has come now though where they are starting to make changes. I have to say that the Labour members appear to be the only people in New Zealand who believe that the Public Service is exempt from all the pressures that have applied to households and businesses right through this country. 
Paul Goldsmith 
: What progress has the Government made in improving front-line services? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Just to use a couple of examples the public health service is now completing 27000 more elective operations this year compared with when we took office and recorded crime rates have dropped by 7 percent in total per head of population. Those are some signs of progress but there are a lot of other areas in the Public Service where we need to make even more progress and we will continue to do that even though money is tight. We are not just making savings; we are also going to improve results. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Given that Prime Minister Holyoake had about five people in his department and the present Prime Minister has about 126 when are we going to see some cuts from the Prime Minister’s department in terms of staff? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I would have thought the member would have a slightly better understanding of what the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet does these days including for instance the operation of the Governor-General which was handled differently back in Keith Holyoake’s day. But I can assure you that the Prime Minister is cooperating at least as much as every other Minister with the need to be careful how money is being spent.