{"id":433261,"date":"2026-05-18T11:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/433261\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:25:13","slug":"budget-2026-nicola-willis-to-announce-major-public-service-reforms-further-cuts-to-roles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/433261\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget 2026: Nicola Willis to announce major public service reforms, further cuts to roles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Willis said there were \u201ctoo many departments\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s around 42 [departments] and in a country like Finland there\u2019s more like 12,\u201d Willis said on Newstalk ZB. <\/p>\n

The Government is currently creating a new Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT), which merges the Ministry for the Environment with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the Ministry of Transport, and parts of the Department of Internal Affairs. <\/p>\n

This merger will be a case study for further pubic sector mergers, which will be investigated. Specific mergers will not be announced tomorrow. <\/p>\n

Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour in his capacity as Act leader has campaigned on reducing the number of departments<\/a>. Earlier this year, he said he wanted the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage to absorb the ministries of Ethnic Communities, Women, Pacific Peoples, Seniors, Youth, and M\u0101ori Development. <\/p>\n

The second leg of the speech will be a push for the public service to join what Willis called \u201cthe AI revolution\u201d. <\/p>\n

The third leg of the speech will be an effort to continue reducing public service headcount. <\/p>\n

The public service comprises what this Government likes to call \u201cback office\u201d roles in ministries and departments. It excludes roles like teachers, doctors and nurses, who are counted as part of the broader public sector. <\/p>\n

However, it also includes some frontline roles like Police and Corrections officers. <\/p>\n

These numbers have grown under the coalition, although unions have made the case that other roles which would be considered \u201cfrontline\u201d have been cut under the coalition as part of its reforms to the public sector. <\/p>\n

Willis said the public service comprised about 1% of the total population \u2013 at about 48,000 \u2013 when the last Labour Government took office in 2017, in coalition with NZ First for the first of its two terms. <\/p>\n

In December last year, the workforce comprised 63,600, just shy of 1.2% of the population. Increasing public sector headcount by a third in six years had allowed the sector\u2019s headcount to \u201cget out of whack\u201d, Willis said. <\/p>\n

She told Newstalk ZB she would set a 2029 workforce reduction target. <\/p>\n

If that workforce target is to reduce public service headcount to its earlier level of about 1% of the population, it would mean a workforce of about 55,000 in 2029. <\/p>\n

This calculation uses population projections by Stats NZ, whose central forecast estimates the population is likely to be about 5.5 million that year. <\/p>\n

If that is the target, the public service would lose roughly a net 8000 roles by 2029. So far, the public service has lost about 2000 roles on a net basis. <\/p>\n

Willis would not give a figure for how many public servants she wanted to cut, but said the workforce needed to drop below 60,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it is up over 60,000 now and we need to get it down below 60,000 and I\u2019ll be releasing figures tomorrow,\u201d Willis said. <\/p>\n

Some of the savings from the exercise will be redirected into the Budget. <\/p>\n

The speech will be delivered at lunchtime on Auckland\u2019s North Shore, which is a break from recent practice, in which Finance Ministers have delivered their main pre-Budget speech in the Wellington region. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willis said there were \u201ctoo many departments\u201d. \u201cThere\u2019s around 42 [departments] and in a country like Finland there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,25429,11357,10666,246,14724,661,6722,111,43,139,20484,69,2170,206848,3109,16860,8263,3599,2552,9345,61,701,82722,1533,792],"class_list":["post-433261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-announce","tag-budget","tag-cuts","tag-finance","tag-further","tag-major","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nicola","tag-nz","tag-plan","tag-prebudget","tag-public","tag-reform","tag-reforms","tag-roles","tag-service","tag-speech","tag-to","tag-tomorrow","tag-unveil","tag-will","tag-willis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}