A Wellington public servant says the Government's proposed cuts to the public service will be "fatal", as workers and union leaders warned of burnout, unemployment and deepening pressure on communities across New Zealand.
By Penny Smith of RNZ
Hundreds gathered in central Wellington on Sunday for a Public Service Association (PSA) rally opposing the government's planned cuts and increasing use of artificial intelligence across the sector.
Briar Wyatt, who worked in policy for a government department, described a workforce already strained by years of restructuring and uncertainty.
''People are suffering burnout after weeks, months of 12-hour working days, watching our teams shrink and shrink while the work programme balloons with major structural reform after major structural reform,'' she told the crowd.
''Survivors' guilt in those of us who kept our jobs in the first big cull. Survivors' guilt of those of us who got out and found other jobs before the market was entirely saturated.
''Aotearoa losing some of our brightest minds, people literally losing the will to live.''
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Wyatt said the constant rhetoric around AI and ''bloat'' had worn workers down.
"The impact of years of job insecurity combined with the vigilance required to avoid hearing talk of how you're the bloat of the country or a computer could do your job - it cuts deep," she said.
The public servant, who has worked in the sector for a decade, said she remained committed to public service because of what it had given her personally.
"As a chronically ill person, the public health system has kept me alive. My entire education was through the public school system. My family has been able to survive at various times thanks to the welfare system and the public servants that administer it."
She ended her speech with a direct warning to ministers.
"I am telling this Government that the cuts you have proposed to the public service will be fatal," Wyatt said.
"Save our public services so we can keep helping Aotearoa be the best it can be."
Another public servant, administrative assistant Debbie Stephens, said workers had endured years of instability.
"I currently work for a government department who's been through restructures for the last four years that I've been working in, and it's time that they stopped," she said.
Stephens, who attended the rally with her daughter Amber and granddaughter Poppy, said she feared for the future of public services.
"I think the National Government's just trying to destroy what we've built up," she said.
"There is a little bit of leeway of making things more efficient, but the way they're doing it, they're just doing it indiscriminately. It's all about saving dollars, it's not about actually trying to make the place better."
She also expressed concern about artificial intelligence replacing human roles.
"It's scary that it could start to take over jobs that I think need that human touch," she said.
PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons accused the Government of carrying out "the deliberate dismantling of the state".
"The plan to replace public servants with AI is chaos dressed up as strategy," she said.
Fitzsimons said the impact of previous cuts had already been severe.
"When workers are dismissed … it can destroy people. It is traumatic and it takes a toll."
Wellington Mayor Andrew Little warned the cuts would ripple far beyond the capital.
"We've seen what the last round of cuts did. It really took the wind out of the sails of Wellington," he said.
Little said the effects would also be felt in surrounding regions and towns where public servants live and spend money.
"When people come to work in Wellington City, whether it's from Wellington City, Hutt City, Upper Hutt, Porirua or beyond, we know that has a benefit for the city as well," he said.
"A lot of businesses that provide the lunches and the coffees and the support … they are affected by that as well."
Council of Trade Unions president Sandra Grey said communities nationwide would suffer.
"Every community in New Zealand is going to lose workers," she said.
"They're going to throw workers on the scrap heap from Kaitaia to Invercargill."
Green Party Wellington Central MP Tamatha Paul accused the Government of attacking workers and vulnerable communities.
"This week has been the most disgusting display of violence against the people who go to work every day to serve our beautiful country," she said.
Paul criticised comments from Finance Minister Nicola Willis about wanting fewer public servants in Wellington.
"She doesn't value the fabric that this city was built upon, which is the public service," Paul said.
The MP also linked the proposed cuts to rising unemployment.
"When there is unemployment and when there is a long line of people waiting for a job, that means if you say to your boss, 'I would like to be paid what I'm worth,' they'll cut you loose and hire the next person in line," she said.
"That's the strategy."
Himiona Grace, speaking on behalf of Te Pāti Māori, said the cuts were part of a wider "class war".
"This is the first time I've ever seen a government in this country campaign on job cuts and celebrate job loss as if it's going to make our lives any better," he said.
Grace said Māori workers had already been disproportionately affected by earlier rounds of restructuring.
Labour public services spokesperson Camilla Belich told the crowd a Labour government would not pursue the same level of cuts.
"Labour would not make these cuts," she said.
"We have always stood for strong public services, we have always invested in our public services and importantly, we have always been the party of working people."
Belich said the government had made a political choice.
"They have delivered unaffordable tax cuts ... and now they are turning around and saying you and your families and everyone who relies on the services you provide will have to suffer for their choices."
A speech from The Opportunities Party candidate Jessica Hammond, herself a public servant of more than 20 years, was briefly heckled by some in the crowd when she criticised successive governments for abandoning long-term public service projects.
Some in the crowd booed her, while others questioned why she was at the rally.
"I've never seen it this brutal," Hammond said of the current cuts.
"Whether you have lost your job like my husband, my sister or her husband, or whether like me you've been left behind to do more with less - it is grim out there."
RNZ has approached Finance Minister Nicola Willis's office for comment.
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