STATE OF IT: Efficiency Drive Cuts Into Front-Line Delivery

National Government's 'Efficiency Drive' Cuts Into Front-Line Delivery

Analysis – By Selwyn Manning, Scoop co-editor.

STATE OF IT (Updated): While State Services Minister Tony Ryall says there are now more public servants working in the front-line, cuts to supporting staff are eroding their ability to deliver safe essential services.

Yesterday the National-led Government announced it would breach its promise to cap cuts to the public service. Finance Minister Bill English announced that to balance the economy he would likely authorise further cuts.

And today (Wednesday), in a move to ease concerns, Ryall said the latest figures from the State Services Commission show that as at 31 December 2010, the number of full-time equivalent positions in the core government administration has fallen by nearly 2,000 or around 5% over the last two years.

Ryall added: "We have more than 300 additional frontline Police officers, around 1600 extra teachers in our schools, over 1000 more nurses, and more than 500 extra doctors working in our public health service."

But Scoop understands that at Auckland District Health Board – New Zealand's largest hospital – due to cuts to ADHB support staff, student nurses are being required to fill in for staff nurses on ward duties.

The Government's cuts have made it necessary for students to be used to top-up the required full time equivilent numbers necessary to run medical and surgical wards.

Cuts or caps to ward budgets have meant positions on ADHB wards, that were once staffed by a full component of experienced and qualified nurses, are now factoring in student nurses to balance the load.

Added to this, nationwide, Ryall's policies have insisted waiting times in emergency departments be shortened by minimising the length of time patients are held in emergency departments. During peak admission times, this places extra pressure on wards that are already under stress.

It is concerning that the situation will get worse as winter approaches and respiratory and communicable disease admissions will increase at hospitals all over New Zealand.

But from his Beehive office, Ryall states: “The Government is determined to see better results from public services and expects that resources are shifted to the frontline services where they are needed most.”

Ryall adds: “We are focused on making sure New Zealanders receive improved frontline services like health, education and public safety, and this means we need to reduce administration overheads.”

Specialist doctor staffing numbers in public hospitals have also reduced to concerning levels.

Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, on Tuesday criticised a pro-government stance taken by Health workforce boss Des Gorman. Powell said Gorman had got his figures grossly wrong.

“He (Gorman) claimed that public hospitals have more than 500 extra senior doctors than a year or two ago. But the latest Medical Council data only has 296 new specialists registered in 2009 (10% less than 2005). This figure declines considerably when resignations and retirements are discounted. We estimated the average annual net gain to be as low as around 136.”

Powell added: “His organisation’s own website reports an average annual growth of 423 doctors from 2005 to 2009 but this also includes general practitioners and junior doctors. Specialists are only one part of this number,” Powell said.

The over-riding reason for all this of course is the economy.

Yesterday Bill English said in a speech: “Public management in the foreseeable future will have more prosaic goals - sorting out which public services and income support measures are the most effective and working out how to provide those within a tightly-constrained budget. Together we will be under constant pressure to deliver better services for little or no extra money.”

The National-led Government is borrowing around $300 million per week to maintain a functioning economy. But its reliance on debt and further borrowing is increasing by the week. As Interest.co.nz's Bernard Hickey reports, last week the New Zealand Government borrowed a staggering NZ$950 million, and plans to borrow a further NZ$750 million this week.

Yesterday, Bill English said: “New Zealand's total debt to foreigners is among the highest in the world and over the next few years that will be pushed even higher by growing government debt. Getting on top of our fiscal position, and rebalancing the economy, necessarily means the Government being a smaller part of the economy than it is now.”

Oddly, the Finance Minister said he did not have a master plan to resolve New Zealand's economic woes. That is most concerning considering it is his job to come up with one.

“Contrary to what some might think, I do not have a pre-prepared master plan sitting in my back pocket and I do not believe there is one elegant model of public management that should be applied in all cases.”

The clear plan is: National is committed to slashing further into public service staff numbers. This latest move is excessive and slashing far deeper that cuts to Wellington-based bureaucrats.

The Public Service Association retaliated yesterday in this vein.

The PSA's National Secretary Brenda Pilott said: “The Government needs to come clean and tell New Zealanders that what it actually wants to do is cut services.”

She added: “The frontline-back office rhetoric doesn’t work anymore. The Canterbury earthquake highlighted the vital links in the chain of service delivery - whether they’re at the front or the back of that chain.”

Pilott warned that the National Government is now on the edge of failing to deliver essential services to New Zealanders: “We’re now at a tipping point. That can’t go on indefinitely without impacting on services,” Brenda Pilott said.

Labour's position is the Government is failing to tell the public the real truth behind its slash and burn public service cuts policy.

Its State Services spokesperson Ruth Dyson said: “Since National came into office, it cut surgery for ACC patients, only for the Minister of Health to have to find an additional $10 million in his department to fund services for patients being dumped by ACC on to DHB waiting lists and today we learned that the fire service will not be investing in new fire engines in order to pay for the Christchurch earthquake.

“These are cuts that affect real people,” Ruth Dyson said.

The Green Party like many others say, by refusing to address a tax shortfall engineered through its tax-cut regime, the National-led Government has dug itself a hole that it cannot get out of – that it simply cannot afford to adequaltely meet Christchurch's needs following the February 22 earthquake.

The Green Party's co-leader Dr Russell Norman highlighted how the National-led Government is stuck in ideological treacle: “Cuts to Government spending are partly driven by the Key’s Government’s reluctance to consider any new streams of revenue to pay for the Christchurch earthquake,” said Dr Norman.

He added: “These cuts will push more public sector workers onto benefits at the very worst time in the economic cycle and will see cuts to working families’ income. The resulting weaker economy will see lower tax revenues and even less capacity for the Government to pay to rebuild Christchurch.

“The alternative approach to funding the rebuild — raising a temporary levy on income — is fiscally more responsible," Dr Norman said.

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