IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW: The Ruminations of Robert Winter
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
McCully: bane of MFAT
The news that 200 plus jobs may be going in MFAT may please Mr McCully and the ideologues, but many think that this is cutting deep into the flesh of a key department. MFAT has about 900 staff apparently, which in international terms is a fairly tight operation for a developed economy. It is also an department from which improved trade performance is expected. It has been in decline morale-wise, since Mr McCully took over his portfolio. One must expect that morale to plummet further as the endless re-application process takes over.
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The Ministry of Education is struggling to perform adequately after heavy budget cuts and the ramming through of ideological nonsense, DoC is losing key experienced staff through their cuts and now the MFAT will be effectively kneecapped as well. I can accept changes that are informed by research and evidence but the cuts to our public service are completely arbitrary and ideologically based. There is evidence to show many state services continue to function on minimal staff because of the good will and unpaid hours from those remaining, but how long can this continue?
ReplyDeleteWhile Mccully continues to stuff up relations with Fiji by following the line of the Peters/Clark regime it looks like he is on the right track re staffing.
ReplyDeleteLike most Government departments MFAT will have a lot of drones so as long he is removing them and not the effective workers all will be fine.
pdm can you please explain what it is you think the public service does and your basis for claiming that it has a lot of "drones" whatever they are?
ReplyDeleteYou seem have given this quite some thought and obviously know an awful lot about how a government department with a necessarily large offshore presence operates, so I'm sure your views would be enlightening and fascinating. How big is the Embassy in Beijing for example, and what does it do? How hard should it be cut and which positions should be disestablished?
Judge Holden
ReplyDeleteThe usefulness of drones is recognised by everyone from the US military to apis mellifera. It seems that pdm is one of a select bunch who can not see how useful and necessary drones really are.
On a more serious note, I think that pdm's suggestion that government departments are full of ineffective workers tells us more about pdm than it tells us about employees in government departments. His/her faith that Murray McCully can and will sort the wheat from the chaff is quaint, too.
My personal experience is that there are some ineffective workers in government (both local and central), as well as in the private sector. The percentage quite low, and is about the same everywhere.