Agencies may not hit targets

• Published date: 10 April 2024
• Author: Thomas Coughlan
• Publication title: Northern Advocate, The (Whangarei, New Zealand)

Heading into her caucus meeting yesterday, she said some agencies would not hit the minimum savings target set by the Government of 6.5 per cent

“There will be agencies who will not end up reaching that target,” Willis confirmed.

She said each agency and that agency’s minister, would reach a “bespoke solution” to finding savings.

“We set an initial target then agencies came back with proposals.

“Ministers looked at those [proposals] in some cases rejected them carte blanche, sometimes they came to me and I rejected them. Sometimes we’ve looked at their proposals and said, ‘Well, why don’t you push a bit harder here and not do that’,” Willis said.

Willis did not say how many agencies would fail to meet the minimum 6.5 per cent target. She said some would be given a reprieve because ministers were not satisfied the proposals they had put up would not cut frontline services.

“Some of them [agencies] have not been able to find proposals that we can be confident wouldn’t compromise frontline services so we’re sticking to our commitment, which is this is about the back office,” Willis said.

“If you’re putting forward proposals that we think would have an undue impact on frontline services, then we’re not going to progress them,” she said.

Willis said the “good news” is that some agencies had found larger savings than they were asked for.

One unanswered question is the extent to which Foreign Minister Winston Peters will subject the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) to the savings exercise. Both in select committee and in Question Time, Peters has suggested he was less keen than his coalition partners to subject the agency to savings.

In February, Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesman David Parker asked Peters if he had agreed to subject MFAT to find savings of 6.5 per cent. Peters did not answer that particular point but suggested...