Incoming Minister for Regulation David Seymour says he expects thousands of "back office" jobs to be slashed from the public service as ACT and National agree to reduce agency headcounts.
He cautioned the numbers suggested now and in the past remained "ballpark" and that the new government hadn't yet consulted with department heads or officials in order to produce a more concrete estimate.
Seymour, who is also the leader of ACT, was questioned on Q+A this morning about the details of his party's coalition agreement with National.
It comes after a whirlwind week where National leader Christopher Luxon announced a deal to form the next government with his coalition partners.
Seymour will also become associate finance minister, associate education minister, and associate health minister. He will also be deputy prime minister from mid-2025.
In National and ACT's agreement, the two parties agreed to, "Deliver savings in public sector spending by reducing non-essential back office functions, with expenditure reduction targets to be set for each agency, informed by the increase in back office headcount at that agency since 2017."
Speaking to Q+A this morning, ACT's leader was asked about his expectations for public service job losses under the new government.
Seymour said: "In the agreement between ACT and National, there is some wording there around, starting with the amounts of people in 2017.
"But then we would adjust that, for example, in education, you'd be looking at, well, there's a lot more students than they were in 2017 — you've got to allow for that. And in police, there's obviously a lot more people to police.
"Allowing for natural growth, you would expect to still reduce quite significantly in many areas, the number of people in the back office.
"I just look at MBIE, I look at the Ministry of Education, and you've got to ask yourself, are we getting a proportionately better deal?"
When asked to give a ballpark figure about how many jobs he estimated would go, he responded that the "absolute top" was 15,000, a figure that would "inevitably" be lower.
"You start to do all of those adjustments and take about a third of that off straight away. Inevitably, there's going to be special cases where we say, well, we want the government to do more or whatever.
"Your 15,000 is your absolute top, and then you know, you're going to come down."
Asked whether 8000 was a reasonable ballpark, the incoming minister responded: "That's not a bad ballpark, but bear in mind, we're now just having a bit of a game of working out what that looks like.
He continued: "We've been talking about it as a matter of principle.
"We haven't been talking about it with the amount of advice that you can get from each chief executive, from the Treasury, and all of the other advisors, and government that can tell you more about the specifics.
"We can sit here and, as you say, ballpark it. We've done that, but I wouldn't want to stand by that before you've seen exactly what the numbers are in each department, and also the changes in population or whatever is relevant to that department."
During the election campaign, both National and ACT pledged to cut the number of back office public service jobs, however, only Seymour's party promised to review headcounts with reference to the 2017 figures — the year Labour was elected to office.
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