POLITICAL CHALK AND CHEESE

Adolf over at No Minister has a very good, almost scholarly dissertation on the differences between National and Labour. Something for journalists to file away for reference in the coming months.

However, we think that this governments steely leadership is worthy of note as well.

Ministers like Judith Collins have managed to face down public service Humpreys who are well past their use by date. Its a tough thing to do - as our dad would say - they are cunninger than a shithouse rat.

Collins has shown clearly that while she knows front line police on the street do a great job, the strategic direction of the police force was lacking. The culture was shit. It was a boys club. She has appointed a tough bugger in Peter Marshall to set things right , he knows what she expects police to achieve and he can be sure in the knowledge that she will unfailingly back him to the hilt and give him all the support he needs when the chips are down.

Crusher Collins has shown she is not a Minister to be trifled with. It is apparent that she gave Broad and Pope a wee push out the door. She gave them enough time to gather their wits and exclaim it was all their idea when plainly it wasnt. The fact that her desire to see them gone was leaked, shows clearly the shake up of the police ivory tower was very popular with the rank and file.

We can never understand New Zealanders medias subtle condemnation of changes to the leadership of the public service with the advent of a new government. Firstly its the government perrogative to choose the CE's they want to work with. They need to know that the people they are working will support the policies they are trying to implement.

The public service is a slow acting dull beast, made fat and lazy from years of over indulgence. The smart and the passionate get mired in process designed to keep account of outputs not outcomes.

For New Zealand to get ahead of the game - that must change. Crusher , is thankfully leading the charge.

TEARS OF A CLOWN

Political correctness is still alive and well in the public service....

Take this odd tale ..

The Department’s Christmas Party is around a Carnival Circus theme and the poster created by the social club that is hung up all around the building depicts, among other images, a clown.

Today we received an email from an employee who tells us she has a severe phobia of clowns and cannot bear to look at the posters. She would like the design of the poster to be changed ASAP. Until then she is going around with post it notes and sticking them up over the face of the clown on the posters. Of course, someone else is going around and taking the post-it’s off.

This employee is taking her complaint to the Chief Executive’s office and we have to put black stickers over the face of the clown on all the posters.

So do all public servants who have phobias of bullshit and procrastination and verbosity get to plonk sitckers over anything that offends us too? - We wish....

PUBLIC SECTOR FREEZE

We are delighted to hear that the government is going to put a freeze on state sector pay packets. ( And that includes firemen who are just public servants with cool trucks) About time and we also like the idea of tidying up the backroom that houses the machinery of government. Duplication and waste still abound. The idea of warehousing the myriad of 0800 numbers across the state sector is a smart one. and purchasing is another area that could be vastly improved.

We know that the general populace wants to see a leaner public service - it is still a fat and ponderous and often unfocused beast.

COMPANIES OFFICE LEADS GOVT DEPARTMENT USE OF THE NET

Well we think so. We love their site. You can easily find all sorts of interesting shit about people for a minimal cost and they make registering as a company, and all the stuff you have to do really easy. And now we have just learnt that they have a blog.

This is great stuff. We hope more govt departments set up something similar..

GARRETT NEEDS TO STOP BEING A WANKER

It appears MP David Garrett has hoof in gob syndrome. We feel bloody sorry for Rodney. This is the sort of distraction he could do without.

Threatening what are essentially public servants from airing their concerns and fears in the correct forum is just plain silly.

Now we are pro private prisons but any MP who puts the fear of god into workers for having a say is just being a bully.

He needs to be tied to a post and Rodney should chuck kinas at him.

AS WE PREDICTED

IRD is in for a shake up. Its been the talk of the town for a couple of weeks.

We think that customs will also see some changes. And please , Womens Affairs. Scrap it.

THEY HAVE HIDDEN THEM

The Herald looks at the cap that SSC Minister Tony Ryall has imposed on the public service and has zeroed in on the communications sector. The numbers don't stack up. The government needs to insure that it takes a look at " Information departments " which are a home for all PR people who specialise in on line communications and often internal communications specialists. The trend started midway last year to shuffle communications staff around and tuck them in what is essentially an adjunct to IT departments while still churning out on line communications and in some cases publications. It was cynical ploy by comms managers to ensure that they still had a small army under their command.

So someone needs to go through all departments and ask some very specific question's to get the real answer to how many communications specialists are hiding in " non communications " groups.

PUBLIC SERVICE ON NOTICE - ESP COMMS

Well this will get the unions all fizzy and seriously reduce the muffin and coffee budgets.

Hon Tony Ryall

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Government Business & Legal nz government roarprawn.blogspot.c

HOOTON'S A WIMP

We love the NBR website - its is a must read for breaking business stories written in a snappy informative style. And they have good columnists too. David Farrar and Matthew Hooton. Trouble is David's column appears on line . Hooton's doesnt - so we went out and bought a inky one and have painstakingly typed it out . Today he is calling for a Masakari in the public service.



We couldn't agree more and have blogged on the issue many many times - In fact that blog waas one of our most popular ever.



Anyway back to Hooton.







Here is his column

The government has begun its long-awaited cuts to the central bureaucracy.

Finance Minister Bill English is reviewing departments’ lowest-priority spending, 86 jobs have gone at the Ministry for the Environment and 70 at the Tertiary Education Commission, and Labour’s Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson – the country’s leading apologist for the public service – is already fretting about policy advisors at Justice, Social Development and the National Library.

The cuts are long overdue.

So indulgently did Labour fatten the public service that Mr Robertson’s electorate notoriously has the highest average income in the country and office space in the capital costs more than in Auckland.

Worryingly, though, National is talking of a mere razor gang when wholesale butchery is required. It should put away its Gillette Mach 3 and wield a masakari. Whole departments should be abolished.

Case Study: Tourism

Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) is the government agency that promotes New Zealand globally. Compared with its competitors in Australia and elsewhere, it operates on a lean budget of just $69 million annually.

In the ten years since then Tourism Minister Lockwood Smith, TNZ chairman Peter Allport and chief executive George Hickton launched their “100% Pure” marketing strategy, annual tourist numbers have leapt 52% to 2.4 million, average length of stay is up 24% and earnings are now $5.9 billion, up a massive 53%.

Taxpayers might think that a junior Treasury analyst could work out that TNZ does a good job, and that a clerk at the Office of the Auditor General could check no one’s hand was in the till, but you would be wrong.

In fact, TNZ is monitored and evaluated by its board, its auditors and minister; by the Treasury, the State Services Commission and the Auditor-General; by the ministries of Women’s Affairs, Maori Development (TPK), Pacific Island Affairs and Ethnic Affairs; by a select committee of Parliament; and of course by the industry itself, including the Tourism Industry Association, the airlines, the Inbound Tour Operators Council, the Hospitality Association, the Motel Association, Regional Tourism Organisations and by dozens of tourism reporters and publications around the country.

This bureaucracy was not enough for Labour. In 2002, it set up a new Ministry of Tourism to advise the minister on “board appointments, roles and functions” and oversee TNZ’s “overall contribution to the government's policy objectives.” The ministry has 24 full-time staff and an annual budget of $7 million, more than 10% of all the money TNZ has to do the real work of getting tourists to New Zealand.

As a result, the levels of accountability from the person who places advertisements in the People’s Daily now run through TNZ’s Shanghai office, to the general manager consumer marketing, to the chief executive, to the board, and now to the ministry, and on to the minister, currently none other than the prime minister himself – all overseen by at least seven other government agencies. Everyone in this process, except perhaps the person who places the ads, earns over $100,000 a year.

Were the Ministry of Tourism simply abolished, and TNZ left to get on with the job, overseen by “just” seven other government agencies, the taxpayer would save $21 million over the next three years, and no one would notice any difference.

The Ministry of Tourism is far from being the worst case. Take the masakari to the corporate welfare programmes of the Ministry for Economic Development and NZ Trade and Enterprise; abolish the pointless Tertiary Education, Families and Electricity commissions; simplify the Emissions Trading Scheme so it won’t cost tens of millions to administer; slash the “policy advice streams” of TPK, Youth Development, Women’s Affairs and so forth, and you’ve saved a billion dollars before breakfast.

Not a single doctor, nurse, teacher, police officer, solider or overseas marketing clerk would be affected. There could even be money left over for pay rises.

Yip Hooton is on the money but we think he is being wimpy though which is unusual. He needs to harden up.



We reckon that a big shiny sharp edged Masakari is not the right tool for the job.

This is really whats needed ...

WHALE TO GET FIRST BLOG QANTAS AWARD?

Now Whale is not noted for his subltly and he is not that whalish anymore - in fact he has lost so much weight he is in danger of having to rename the Whale Oil blog the Norwegian Racing Sardine News.

Anyway today he has a pearler of a story - it has all the right ingredients. Winston Peters , government departments and leaked emails.

Its a story he broke and has doggedly followed for weeks.

And wait theres more! Apparently he has more revelations tomorrow .

LINE BY LINE DOLLAR BY DOLLAR THEY GO

People in and out of Government departments are head down and tushes up as they pour over the books of each and every Government department and Ministry. Line by line the go, project by project, programme by programme, trimming , snipping , biffing out , asking why, asking how and asking "what the fuck?"


Up they front to Ministers with weasel words, fawning over their new masters whispering n how good they have been and how much they have trimmed, offering up only dust, only to be told to go away and come back with more. Some have been told twice already that they must do better. CE's stare at you with the eyes of the hunted in the lift. It is a new dawn and the cold light of reality sees them shiver.

It is a beautiful thing to behold. People in the hinterland should be allowed to come to Wellington to watch to give them some satisfaction that this government that they gave their good votes to, is performing financial liposuction on the bloated beast that is the public service.

Over coffee you hear the whines and the howls and see the tears from some as their little fiefdoms are sucked of fat. In other corners rivers of joyful tears run down the faces of the pragmatic as finally they see the waste being put in a bucket and turfed out. Gone are the raspberry and white chocolate muffins, gone are the two course luncheons for little meetings, Going are the Koru Club cards, gone are the oversized rentals. Going are the spurious overseas conferences for " networking." Going are the crap documents in huge storerooms that serve no purpose, remain unread, never distributed.

All is Bliss - just bliss.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Yip , this story about IT problems with the GSN is just the tip of the iceberg. There are IT cockups peppered right throughout the Public Service.

SECURITY CHECKS

We like Kiwiblog, have noted the Dominion Post Story on a big demand from government departments to do security checks on top level public service applicants in the wake of the Mary- Anne Thompson case.

We think that its a good move but we still wonder what checks the SIS did on Thompson. We like David Farrar had to undergo a security check which took six weeks to complete.
Mine was pretty bloody thorough. Evidently they seemed concerned that I might have been a Maori radical, a notion that was quickly extinguished by my referees.

Surely Thompson had to undergo a top secret clearance considering the type of information she dealt with during her time in and around the Beehive and government departments.

No doubt all these questions and more will be answered at Thompson's trial.

HOW WILL CHANGE COME ABOUT IF THERE IS NO CHANGE?

This story from Stuff is very annoying.

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples used humour to reassure Te Puni Kokiri's staff members their jobs were safe - saying they did not have to look for a new job "at least for a week".

Humourous maybe but we need major reorganisation of the lard arsed public service. And if the Maori party want a department that delivers what they want they are going to have to make some changes to Te Puni Kokiri and feed in to the process of change required in other government departments.

Referring to comments earlier in the year that he wanted the Maori development agency revamped, he took a light-hearted approach yesterday as he met staff there to dispel their job security fears. "There is no major review going to be done on your department so you don't need to apply for any other job this week - or even next week," he said.

Well what we want to know is how the hell are you going to change the way things are being delivered to your people Pita!

Dr Sharples led a powerful new Government delegation to the meeting, including his three fellow Maori Cabinet ministers, National's Georgina te Heuheu and Paula Bennett, and Maori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia. There was a lot of apprehension among staff in the buildup to the meeting, resulting from remarks Dr Sharples made earlier this year that he wanted to see Te Puni Kokiri revamped.

They are just as apprehensive as workers in every other govt department and rightly so. If this govt ( which includes the Maori Party ) does not respond to the calls for a more efficient public service then they will be doing this country a grave disservice.

According to its website, the agency employs 335 permanent staff.

Like most Govt departments there are a lot of thinkers, quite a few hui ' ers and bugger all doers.

Dr Sharples confirmed yesterday that he intended placing greater emphasis on the work the department did on Maori health.

We we could not agree more - but to do that he is going to have the make structural and policy changes to effect any difference in delivery.

Among those at the meeting were agency chief executive Leith Comer, Maori Language Commission chairman Erima Henare and chief executive Huhana Rokx, Maori Television deputy chairman Wena Tait and chief executive Jim Mather, and Te Mangai Paho chair Jacqui Te Kani.

Also at yesterday's meet and greet session for the four Maori ministers were Maori Party MPs Te Ururoa Flavell and Rahui Katene, and National's new Maori list MPs Paul Quinn and Hekia Parata.

The National led Government cannot loose sight of the need to make changes to the public service. Staff know they can do better and the loudest of calls for change are coming from within govt departments. What the govt cannot do is be dishonest. It should be very clear that changes are needed and that will result in changes to peoples jobs. Otherwise it is the most dishonest of politics which will not serve this country well.

GOVERNMENT WASTE

We spend a bit of time lurking in govt departments and we see so much waste , stupid jobs, stupid strategies. We know there are also people in the public service who are committed to what they are doing and really want to make the country a better place.
But its time for teh public service to take a good hard look at what it does and how it does it. It has got so bloody fat - becoming an economic jabba.

Key has said that he wants to reduce government waste - yee bloody ha , we say.

We have seen thousands and thousands of documents in store rooms and even in off site warehouses that go nowhere - publications that should never have been published - companies on " preferred supplier contracts" that have not felt the cold chill of competition for years.
Or stupid campaigns ( like the multi million dollar campaign to get us to change to better lightbulbs. )

It must change - If you have any evidence of waste - email us anonymously at bustedblonde@gmail.com. We will print all the best ones.

HICKEY ON THE MONEY - WELLINGTON BLOATED

Bernard Hickey takes a l0ok at the economic Jabba that Wellington has become. We see it every day but there is a subtle change - we lunch a lot. And even my good and affluent mates are shunning the Docksides, Shed Five type restaurants in favour of " cheap and cheerfuls" and there are more people travelling on the buses. But Hickey is right. I have govt work and the offices and the waste are unfuckingbelievable. I have private sector clients and they are a world apart. Next week we will write a series of posts on the waste we have seen in the public sector. We are quietly confident that Key will give the public sector a shake up.

OUTRAGEOUS GOVERNMENT WASTE

A clue why the public accounts are in deficit for the next ten years and 18 billion of your taxes was wasted over the last seven years.

This is the increase in staff numbers by some major Government Departments over the last 7 years .
Oh and by the way there was no increase in output or improvement in quality of output.

Ministry of Education
2000	906 in Wellington	1224 nationwide
2002	1460 in Wellington	3675 nationwide
2004	1899 in Wellington	5553 nationwide
2006	1998 in Wellington	5756 nationwide
2007	2202 in Wellington	5907 nationwide
Ministry of Health
2000	834 in Wellington	911 nationwide
2002	1202 in Wellington	1673 nationwide
2004	1641 in Wellington	2204 nationwide
2006	1958 in Wellington	3545 nationwide
2007	2265 in Wellington	2595 nationwide
Department of Corrections
2000	1425 in Wellington	7698 nationwide
2002	1822 in Wellington	8595 nationwide
2004	2208 in Wellington	9435 nationwide
2006	2600 in Wellington	11,294 nationwide
2007	2723 in Wellington	12,877 nationwide
Ministry of Justice
2000	345 in Wellington	345 nationwide
2002	373 in Wellington	380 nationwide
2004	1817 in Wellington	4819 nationwide
2006	2199 in Wellington	5606 nationwide
2007	3468 in Wellington	5833 nationwide

Source: State Services Commission (figures include fulltime equivalent staff).

We thought it was bad but this is REALLY bad.

Our thanks to the spaz , and the old tazzy devil

PUBLIC SERVICE GETS VERY FAT

Well their bums anyway - 19 football fields of them - Well done for ferreting this out Gerry Brownlie. Bet that would have paid for a few courses of herceptin.

More at Stuff

SNOUTS IN TROUGH

No Minister has a very good post on fat salaries for fat public service CEO's

IMPROVING EFFICIENCIES IN GOVT DEPARTMENTS

One of the things on Nationals agenda is to create t some efficiencies in the public service.

There has been some high level talk about how to consolidate some departments, ministries and organisations.

Getting rid of Women's Affairs is top of my agenda - as is Families Commission - They should be folded back into the Super Social Development Ministry.

Its big, but it largely does a reasonable job.

Ministry for the Environment could be devolved into both Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and DOC without too much trouble.

But the one that is being talked about openly, is the amalgamation of MORST, FORST and Trade and Enterprise. There are suggestions that if he is returned Pete Hodgson is planning a significant change of his own, a merger of the three. Collaboration between the three has increased this year and Hodgson wants more efficiencies.


Trade and Enterprise is the logical umbrella for the other two as it will give them a sharper commercial focus.