Andrew Dickens: This country won't survive drastic cuts to the public workforce

Andrew Dickens Afternoons

So the World Cup has finished it' stellar month downunder with a victory for Spain.

Who, I hope, took the time to thank Palmerston North for the city's contribution towards their success. After all one would presume that if the team was so bored with the Palmie nightlife then they'd be getting good sleep and spending plenty of time practicing and improving their game during the day.

And that is the magic of this World Cup. That New Zealand was so significantly and visibly involved.

We hosted half the draw in a tournament whose ratings far exceeded anything we've hosted before. Bigger than a Rugby World Cup, bigger than the America's Cup, bigger than a Commonwealth Games. 2 billion pairs of eyes watched us. Despite what negative columnists wrote about our domestic problems being visible to the world I can assure you that was not the case. We looked great. And if a fraction of those people decide to visit us in the future that's a win.

The monetary benefit is still to be calculated but it's fair to say the whole thing was an unqualified success and we owe it to public servants from the council and the government who oiled the wheels in the first place.

Some of the workers at Tataki Auckland Unlimited had been working for 15 years to convince FIFA that we were up to the task. They had to battle against super powers like England and Germany who were against us co-hosting. But they got there.

But those are the people who are currently under threat. Wayne Brown wants his civil service to return to rubbish bins and water and no more. 200 jobs are going at Tataki Auckland Unlimited. It's the sort of short sighted populist policy that is alarming Auckland businesses who understand that nothing happens without incentives, which they told the Mayor back in May.

It's why Coldplay is playing Perth and Taylor Swift is playing Sydney and Melbourne but neither are playing New Zealand. The cities and the country cut them a deal.

ACT's David Seymour is waging the same fatwa against public servants which he continued this morning. Now while I have no problem with KPI targets I do have a problem with his belief that this country can survive his drastic cuts to the public workforce.

A few months ago Mr Seymour said he could cut $1 billion out of the public sector in a week. He went further reckoning he could cut $38 billion out of the annual bill. He particularly dislikes event incentives and sweetheart deals for things like films and Research and Development, calling them corporate welfare. He wants to eviscerate Stephen Joyce's innovation, MBIE.

He believes business initiatives should stand on their own feet. But he ignores the fact that without public money some of things wouldn't even be able to crawl.

The sort of cost cutting Mr Seymour is suggesting would also provoke an enormous austerity and impact the whole economy. Public servants buy goods and services from the private sector. But they don't if they're unemployed.

But it's a popular policy. He's exploiting an embedded dislike of public servants that has been stoked along by small government capitalists for decades now. The belief that all public servants are bad wastes of money and stuff would happen without them.

Stuff would happen but not at the scale we've enjoyed lately. After all what business is prepared to throw 15 years of effort and incentive at an event that might not even happen?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.