\u201cThis coming Thursday more than 845,000 students will miss out on class time and over 6000 patients will miss appointments and procedures for their health. Genuine offers have been made and the opportunity to bargain remains open,\u201d one advert said.<\/p>\n
Another advert declared \u201cunions need to return to the table\u201d, claiming \u201cgenuine offers have been made and the opportunity to bargain remains open\u201d.<\/p>\n
Labour MP Camilla Belich, an employment lawyer and the party\u2019s public service spokeswoman, said she was concerned the adverts compromised the commission\u2019s independence and claimed the Government had sought to \u201cweaponise\u201d the commission against striking workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think any amount of public funds should be spent in a political attack on organisations that are undertaking good faith bargaining, and I\u2019m absolutely shocked that that decision was taken,\u201d Belich<\/p>\n
She considered it a misuse of public money and believed it warranted an investigation. <\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he feared the commission was being inappropriately politicised. <\/p>\n
\u201cMinisters should be out there fronting this, not the Public Service Commissioner [Sir Brian Roche].<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does, in my view, overstep the bounds of what a politically neutral public service should be involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Public Service Association national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the adverts were an \u201cunprecedented and inappropriate use of public funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe advertising won\u2019t work as the public can see for themselves the problems in health and education … the Commission should withdraw the advertising and issue an apology.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the statement from the commission spokesman, it described the adverts\u2019 purpose as providing \u201cpublic information about disruption to services and what is being done to prevent further disruption\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Public Service Commissioner is leading collective bargaining negotiations with education sector unions \u2013 which affects thousands of public servants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is appropriate for the Commissioner to share factual information about this work with the public. Social media is one of the channels commonly used to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The adverts had so far cost $248.43 but more could be purchased. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe content complies with relevant government advertising and political neutrality guidelines,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Luxon yesterday dismissed questions about the adverts and suggested the money used would be \u201cnegligible\u201d.<\/p>\n
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald\u2019s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei and the Herald in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis coming Thursday more than 845,000 students will miss out on class time and over 6000 patients will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1443,432,3113,68877,5842,2371,68878,5232,16639,42,68879,296,12898,68875,6721,68876,65834,300,43,4762,3109,2552,4485,40,38,41,39,14638],"class_list":["post-91913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-about","tag-action","tag-ads","tag-adverts","tag-calling","tag-commission","tag-condemning","tag-create","tag-decisions","tag-headlines","tag-impending","tag-into","tag-investigation","tag-kawa","tag-labour","tag-mataaho","tag-megastrike","tag-money","tag-news","tag-party","tag-public","tag-service","tag-strike","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91913","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=91913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}