There is plenty of dead wood in most government departments, no one will notice 130 less, well maybe the cafes. Min Health and Min Ed, both have too many paper shufflers and not enough front liners, go Johno!

Good news. Bring back more nurses and doctors in the hospitals. But feel sorry for those who will lose their jobs. Hope the Government can up with a quick solution to help those who will lose their jobs to find other employment.

It continues to beggar belief the comments from people here saying "good job" when they hear about people losing their jobs, and the comments about these people who do nothing, based on what evidence, spin put out by a MP who has no idea what it means to lose their jobs. John Key said he would do his best to protect people from the sharp edges of the recession, but not if you happen to work in the public sector, then its all on, easy meat! Nice work John pumping up the unemployment levels and ruining lives....such a nice genial man!

SusieQ #22: A 3.8% cut in the total number of employees can hardly be regarded as "cutting the public service to the bone". Nor is it a "deep cut" as described by the left wing script writers at 3 News!

Richard #12 Labour is and was not a communist government. Under national in the 1990's if you are that old. The increse in over load for staff in all sectors of public offices. I.e Winz Health MOe Justice etc was a nationalists' motive. Where we need to stop, alter, change etc, is the miltary spending which is not for NZ's growth. Of course there is abundance of extra staff. This is caused by having better services or people in these positions are looking after their position. Natural course of events will demise due the retirement of the baby boomers. The need to cut back is at the top of all these services not at the bottom where it does hurt "joe Bloggs'.

This old trodden rubbish about left and right was a construct to divide and conquer, and you Richard are still believing in it and what is more surprising you blast it on stuff. Move on and and leave the baggage where it stands in the past.

SpaceMonkey #17's analogy is seriously flawed -- the pit crew of a race team ARE front line workers themselves, not bureaucrats. His analogy would apply if doctors and nurses were being cut leaving only the specialists in place. A more accurate F1 analogy would be the F1 team cutting PR, HR, advertising etc. jobs -- Which wouldn't be a bad thing if that part of the business had been increased by thousands of employees over the past decade with no notable benefit.

@ Richard #12 - Would you give the "communist" line a rest? It was never true, and the repetition is tiresome and unintelligent. A government that takes an interest in social services as well as fiscal is not by definition communist. Get your head out of the sand.

Maree #11 states:

"He [Stephen McKernan] has resigned because of political interference in axing of jobs at the Ministry."

Maree, do you actually have factual evidence to support the above statement, as this is not only a very serious accusation to make, but a potentially libelous statement under the Defamation Act, 1952.

If you have the evidence let's see it please. Otherwise you may wish to publicly retract your statement.

I suggest you also get to grips with the State Services Commission selection and recruitment procedures for engaging senior public servants. It is not a loose process open to 'political interference' as you suggest, nor are senior public servants employed directly as political appointees by the Government.

Governments do make political appointments to quangos such as SOE Boards that are outside the ambit of the core civil service. This is an accepted practice, and one that is employed by both political parties when in power.

Governments are also in the habit of employing soon-to-be retired-from-parliament MPS in foreign affairs posts such as London and Canada - but this is a very different scenario from installing "lackeys" in senior core public service roles.

But don't let the facts get in the way of your ignorance and/or Labour/PSA trolling now, will you.

Good move and long overdue. Now lets restructure the number of MP's we have as well. Theres at least 30 too many of these overpaid, self centered individuals and along with their personal State funded staff we could probably save another $300 million annually. Also lets bring the retiring benefits & perks MP's get back into line with what other short term senior management Kiwis get on retirement.

A mate of mine recently showed me a list of works carried out by a government department (he works there). He asked me how much I would charge to carry it out. I said $35,000 and that would be all costs paid and making a good margin for me. He then told me this department had spent over $700,000 and counting to do the same work-and that did not include the indirect costs of managers, pay clerks etc.

This is true and I could hardly beleive it was true. The fact is the civil servants have had their snouts in the trough with no accountability for a least 10 years. That was appraching a million bucks that could have been left in the tax payers hands to pay real people to do real work or to have provided front line services somewhere. The "pit crew" that allows this has been incredibly spoilt and indulged by the previous government. The sad thing is they really think they are doing something worthwhile when in fact they are wasting their time and the tax dollars of the increasing few export earners that keep the tide of red ink at bay.

We do not need endless ranks of middle managers who needlessly shuffle paper. Many years ago when i was a government servant the biggest impediment to producing frontline services was the endless job justification paperwork handed down from above. Sack more of them and spend the money on the doctors, nurses, teachers and other in the frontline.