A union is slamming the Government for being "soft on organised crime" amid proposed job cuts among those working to combat child exploitation, violent extremism and money laundering.
The Public Service Association (PSA) Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi has on Monday revealed plans to cut 79 New Zealand Customs Service jobs and 41 roles at the Department of Internal Affairs.
These positions include those working in the ports and airports, as well as those dealing with digital harm, child exploitation, money laundering, counter-terrorism and other regulatory roles.
The PSA warned the Government's cuts are putting New Zealand at risk.
"This is irresponsible and dangerous at a time when these crimes are getting more sophisticated and causing more harm than ever before," PSA assistant secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said.
"The elderly and children are prime targets of online scams, which are growing in sophistication every day."
Fitzsimons also said the Government was contradicting itself when it came to scrapping our world-leading smokefree goal.
"The Government rolled back the smoking reforms because it was worried about the black market for tobacco yet is weakening the agency tasked with stopping criminals from importing illegal tobacco products. How does that make sense?" she asked.
"It has taken years for successive Governments and our Customs officers to set up our internationally renowned border management. These cuts will harm New Zealand for years to come."
Minister of Customs Casey Costello, a NZ First Minister, told Newshub that: "Customs needs to be able to work effectively, deliver the frontline border services that protect the country, and to support New Zealand's trade and revenue collection. That's why the proposals also see changes to organisational structures and new roles being created."
Costello also acknowledged the proposal would be difficult on impacted workers.
"The consultation process has only started today, and I know the comptroller is genuine about receiving staff feedback on the proposal, so there's not a lot to say at this stage, except that I appreciate that this process can be difficult for affected staff," she said.
"These are employment decisions for the agency, but the chief executive, Christine Stevenson, has been keeping me updated on her thinking."
Senior National MP Paul Goldsmith, who holds portfolios including Justice Minister, also last week told AM that current Government department spending levels were unsustainable and the Coalition needed to make a "lean and efficient" public sector.
"I think what we saw was a hiring binge under the previous Government - there were 16,000 more public servants brought in over their six years and all the results were worse."
It's still unclear exactly how many roles will go overall.
However, Fitzsimons criticised cuts for frontline workers.
"The false promise of 'no cuts to the frontline' has again been exposed with these proposed cuts - try telling someone who has lost their life savings to an online scam that the tracking down of these criminals is a back-office function and therefore not important," she said.
"These are the very people whose job it is to be exposed to some of the most vile and traumatising material imaginable and those who control our long borders as a last line of defence on behalf of us all. What could be more frontline?"
Fitzsimons said among the cuts it was proposed to axe 21 roles from the Anti Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism directorate.
"This is the team charged with supervising more than 5000 financial institutions and other non-financial businesses and professions for compliance with measures to detect and deter money laundering and terrorism financing. This includes three casinos, 1361 law firms, 940 real estate agents and 633 accountants."
DIA proposed cuts
The Digital Safety Group is being cut by eleven staff, including:
- Lead Online Investigator Digital Child Exploitation
- Principal Advisor Countering Violent Extremism
- Senior Investigator Digital Messaging Systems reduced from two to one and the work being deprioritised
- Intelligence and Insights analysts - three roles including lead analyst
- Lead Operational Advisor
The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism directorate is being reduced from 51 to 30 (24 roles disestablished and three new roles established in an investigations function), including through:
- Removal of the Deputy Director and Principal Advisor roles
- The Auckland team being reduced from 16 staff to 10, losing one Manager (Operations), two senior anti-money laundering regulators, an anti-money laundering regulator and two graduate regulators
- The Wellington team being reduced from 10 staff to six, losing a senior anti-money laundering regulator, two anti-money laundering regulators and a graduate regulator
- The Service Design team being cut by six roles, including a forensic accountant, with the remainder being reassigned to another team
- The number of Practice Leaders being reduced from two to one
- The nine-person Strategy and Capability team within Regulatory Services is being proposed for disestablishment
"The Digital Safety group is at the frontline of New Zealand’s defence against online harm. Yet the spending cuts are forcing the Department of Internal Affairs to decimate the very teams keeping New Zealand safe from digital violent extremism, scams and online child exploitation," Fitzsimons said.
Customs proposed cuts
Twenty-two roles from Trade, Revenue and Compliance Service Delivery:
- Auckland (11), Wellington (one), Christchurch (six), Dunedin (two), Hamilton (one) and Te Awamutu (one)
- Includes removing 11 out of 15 roles in the Assurance Team, disestablishing the Christchurch assurance team completely
- 12 roles from Border Operations - Auckland (six), Wellington (one), Christchurch (five)
- Includes disestablishing the role of Supervising Customs Officer (SCO) in Christchurch and having the remaining Christchurch staff report to a SCO in Auckland
- Seven roles from Operations, Intelligence, Investigations and Enforcement - Auckland (two), Wellington (two), Christchurch (three)
- Includes removing two of the three Auckland-based dog trainer positions from the Detector Dog Unit
- Includes removing the Chief Customs Officer role responsible for training in the group
- Five roles in the recently established Maritime Group
- One Senior Customs Officers each in Auckland, Whangarei, Gisborne, Timaru and Invercargill
- This will remove the daily Customs presence from Whangarei, Gisborne, Timaru and Invercargill ports and transfer the work to Opua, Napier, Lyttleton and Dunedin ports respectively
"Customs is the first line of defence against organised crime importing illegal drugs and firearms and is a critical agency ensuring everybody pays the correct revenue from duties and excise taxes," Fitzsimons said, adding that the work of Customs accounts for about 15 percent of total Crown revenue.
"The people who are facing possible job loss are carrying out valuable work on the frontline. Some oversee staff who work to ensure importers are correctly paying excise taxes and duties.
"Others train detector dogs who sniff out illegal drugs and firearms in mail, at airports and on ships. A halving of the dog training unit undermines the effectiveness of this vital frontline role."
Fitzsimons said "none of this makes sense" when talking about the types of roles that could go.
"The capability of the frontline Border Operations team is being weakened. These are experienced specialist staff who ensure all systems and processes are working effectively. They have responsibility for quarantine rules, x-ray capability and other goods inspections work," she said.
"Today, we are seeing the Government's real priorities - putting tax cuts for landlords and others ahead of the safety and security of New Zealanders."
Labour slams 'bizarre', 'appalling' cuts
"The idea that roles of this kind should be scrapped is not only bizarre, it's frankly appalling," Labour leader Chris Hipkins said in a statement on Monday.
"National is going too far, placing huge risk back on children and young people not just on our shores but further afield.
"The digital child exploitation team leads important work cracking down on criminals and is New Zealand's bridge to international law enforcement agencies. It identified more than 90,000 online accounts that traded or possessed child sexual abuse material in a single mission in 2022 and 46 people based in New Zealand were arrested as a result."
Hipkins said it shows "nothing is safe from the National Government's cuts" and this proposal was "taking New Zealand backwards".
"We have heard time and time again that frontline services will not be cut, but now we have a hiring freeze imposed on already short-staffed hospitals, children are being forgotten as Oranga Tamariki shrinks, and education outcomes will be kicked to the curb along with roles working on the school lunch programme and in the school property team.
"Today's job losses are not only an appalling lack of judgement by a Government that claims it's serious about cracking down on crime, it shows they also aren't serious about tackling the tobacco black market as they claimed during the roll-back of the tobacco legislation.
"It brings the total job cuts to about 3150. That's over 3000 households affected by a Government desperately scrambling to pay for irresponsible tax cuts with frontline jobs. This is a choice and the choice is not worth it."
PM defends proposed cuts
Newshub reached out to National for comment on these cuts but was directed to a media standup where Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spoke generally about his Government's public sector cuts from Thailand on Monday.
Luxon defended the proposals and pushed blame on the previous Government for its "wasteful spending".
"What we've said to the CEOs of those agencies is make sure that every single person, every single dollar, every resource you've got to keep working at that to make sure that it's focused on the frontline services and delivering better outcomes for New Zealanders.
"They've made decisions around stopping programmes, about removing waste, dealing with roles that they don't think deliver as well as they should or could. I appreciate that's tough at very much a personal level but New Zealanders expect us to make sure that we move the resources from the back-office that are bureaucracy right to the frontline services that deliver better services for them.
"As I've said before, I want more medical doctors not spin doctors - so that's a good example of what we're talking about."
Despite backlash on the cuts at agencies like Oranga Tamariki and education, Luxon said the May 30 Budget would see investment in those agencies.
"We are expecting better outcomes and better results and if a CEO needs to reorganise their resources and the money and the spend on people to better organise to deliver towards those goals that's what all of this is about. That's what the New Zealand public expect."
