David Seymour's smaller government and smaller public service plan - how he proposes to do it

ACT leader David Seymour has long pushed to cut the public service back to 2017 levels, but when it comes to shrinking government, he says reform should start at the top.

Seymour in February cemented the view he first floated more than a year earlier - calling out what he described as "vanity portfolios" such as the establishment of the Minister for Auckland, and promising no more than 20 ministers and no more than 30 government departments.

Speculation around the reduction of public service agencies circulated widely last year, with the outcome that eventuated being a merger of Ministry of Transport, Environment and Housing and Urban Development. 

Expanding on his policy proposal, the Deputy Prime Minister told Interest.co.nz, “MMP has led to this proliferation of ministers and portfolios."

“As soon as you're a minister, you start producing Cabinet papers. Now you imagine a Cabinet of 10 people. Maybe they average a paper a week. So you've got to read 10 papers.

“But once you get 28 ministers, if they all produce a paper every week, then that's an average of 28 papers,” sometimes getting up to 50 a week going through government. 

“My challenge is, can any government… really say that it's fixing what matters when you just get this mass proliferation?”

Then there’s the number of departments, he says. 

“A lot of ministers are, in theory, controlling multiple departments. 

“But then… actually a lot of departments have multiple ministers. So you look at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), there's 23 different ministers that the chief executive of MBIE theoretically answers to.”

Seymour said he was in the minority of one of about five ministers who are not part of MBIE. 

“In that environment, can you say that you've got a minister with a budget of taxpayers' money, a contract with the department to deliver certain services and strong... accountability? 

“If you really bring in the focus, then I think you can get a lot better results. Because at the moment, I think there's a frustration on both sides of politics - we just put all this cash in, and the results don't come.”

On how he would logistically propose to reduce government, Seymour said it was “surprisingly easy to establish or disestablish a department.” 

“I would start, and this is what we'll campaign on, 20 ministers all in the Cabinet. 

“No department has more than one minister, no minister has more than two departments. If you did that, I think you'd very quickly focus the mind of those ministers on how do we crunch down and focus on what matters most?”

It's Seymour's long-held belief that has drawn criticism from the Public Service Association (PSA) - calling his proposal in February as being "straight out of the hard-right playbook - slash and burn now, worry about the consequences later." 

PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons called the "lazy politics."

"The truth is New Zealand needs a capable, well-resourced public service to tackle the challenges ahead. Seymour's slash-and-burn approach would leave us weaker, less prepared, and less able to protect New Zealanders when they need it most."