Yesterday it was announced that the Department of Internal Affairs is shedding 79 jobs as it joins the growing number of Government departments facing the slash and burn machine that is this coalition of chaos. But it is the job descriptions of those that are going, which highlight the extreme short-sightedness of this massive scale culling of the N.Z. public service.
Among the jobs to go include 11 staff investigating and advising on child exploitation and countering extremism. Another victim is the anti-money laundering team which will see 24 jobs lost in return for just three created. Roles involving the monitoring of banks, law firms and casinos are all on the chopping block.
Also going are Customs jobs in border security in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland.
Aside from grotesquely weakening some very important roles played to ensure the security and social wellbeing of this country, some of the planned replacements are really no better. Evidence has emerged that many of the proposed cuts in other sectors are going to be filled out by consultants, some of whom appear to be in line for grotesque pay rates far exceeding anything paid to most of those losing their jobs.
Just last week 1,000 jobs were slashed across the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development. The latter is one that I have in the past heaped considerable scorn upon largely because of problems with how Work and Income New Zealand have treated their clients – myself included. But last week I felt nothing but sympathy. Not everyone was bad, and perhaps I just had a not very good run of case managers. More, a good friend and his wife both work for M.S.D. and were made to watch, as she was telling me at his 50th party at the weekend a score of colleagues lose their jobs.
If multiple entire sectors of Government simply goes on strike for an indefinite length of time at some point in the next 30 months as New Zealanders wake up to how catastrophically bad this government is, I would not be surprised.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 