David Seymour says his party would return bureaucrats working in central government to 2017 levels.
With inflation rising, the ACT leader said there's too much money chasing too few goods and part of the reason is that Government spending is "out of control". Taming inflation needs to start with "politicians showing a bit of restraint".
"ACT would start by returning the number of bureaucrats working in central government to 2017 levels," he said.
"The number of public servants exploded between 2017 and 2021. Labour added 13,845 full-time equivalent workers at an average salary of $87,600 over that period. That's an extra $1.21 billion in wages alone.
"These workers don't include teachers, police officers, nurses, or any front-line workers. They're administrators who make work for themselves competing with the private sector (e.g. Kainga Ora) or dream up new bureaucracy to make life harder for workers (e.g. Ministry of Education)."
Seymour said ACT questioned whether taxpayers were getting $1.21 billion worth of better outcomes from the "explosion" in bureaucrats, and if not, why they were still getting paid.
"At a minimum, we should return to 2017 numbers, saving $1.21 billion in salaries, and probably another billion in non-salary employment costs," he said.
"We should then go further, and ask another simple question: what do we need government to do, and how many people do we need to do it? We need to stop assuming government departments should exist because they always have."
He said there's a need to "zero-base" government, meaning going back to zero and asking if the bureaucracies we currently have didn't exist, would they be established today?
"If government departments can show the extra public servants have achieved good results for New Zealanders, we would keep them. If not, they'd go," Seymour said.
"Many New Zealand companies no longer exist: Deka, the Auckland Star, South Canterbury Finance, Mainzeal, Video Ezy. If businesses don't deliver, they go. Why should a government department be any different?
"How many zombie departments and bureaucrats does this country have? People who just carry on collecting a paycheque. Why do we put up with the idea that government can get bigger, but it can never get smaller?"
Seymour added that ACT would ask every government department to answer: "If you didn't exist, who would notice and why?"
He said that another cycle of National holding the line so Labour can "pick up right where it left off" won't do.
"New Zealand needs real change - that should start with politicians showing a bit of restraint when it comes to spending other people's money."
