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Every weekday join the new voice of local issues on Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald, 9am-12pm weekdays.Its all about the conversation with John, as he gets right into the things that get our community talking.If its news youre after, backing John is the combined power of the Newstalk ZB and New Zealand Herald news teams. Meaning when it comes to covering breaking news you will not beat local radio.With two decades experience in communications based in Christchurch, John also has a deep understanding of and connections to the Christchurch and Canterbury commercial sector.Newstalk ZB Canterbury Mornings9am-12pm withJohn MacDonald on100.1FM and iHeartRadio. Language: en-us Genres: News, News Commentary, Politics Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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John MacDonald: What you don't hear about Singapore's public service
Tuesday, 19 May, 2026
I’ll make a bet with you. These 9,000 job cuts in the public sector that the government’s announced won’t happen. It’s easy to say. But making it happen is a completely different story. There’ll be some, for sure. But the whole 9,000? They’re dreaming. Because, from what I’ve seen and heard so far, they are flying blind. At the moment, there are about 65,000 people working in the public service. Cutting that by 9,000 to get it closer to 55,000 is what the government wants. Nicola Willis reckons that would save taxpayers $2.4 billion. But, as well as reducing the number of workers, the government also wants departments to make better use of AI technology. And this is why these 9,000 job cuts aren’t going to happen. Because the government clearly knows no more about artificial intelligence than the rest of us. I despaired when I heard Nicola Willis saying she got one of her staff to have a play with it and produced a document within minutes. It was like me thinking I could educate a 16-year-old about social media. Pretending I’m all over it. Nicola Willis isn't the only one. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, for example, says he doesn’t quite know how AI could be deployed across the public service. He says there are “enormous opportunities right across the board, and none of us know what they are yet. Some of them will be things that we've never even thought about.” And that’s the basis they’re using for getting rid of 9,000 jobs over the next three years. What’s more, who says we have too many public servants? Probably the ones who say we should be more like Singapore. They’ll tell you that Singapore has 16 government ministries and that’s what we should have too. They’ll say Singapore is a similar sort of size population‑wise. Singapore has 6.1 million people. New Zealand’s population is 5.3 million. But guess how many public sector workers there are in Singapore? This is what these people don’t tell you. We’ve got 65,000. Singapore has 158,000. So, not only does Singapore have way more government workers than we do on a purely numbers basis, it also has way more than us on a percentage of the population basis. The government in Singapore is using AI. But it’s pouring a truckload of money into it too. The government here isn’t talking about that. Because, yes, it might save $2.4 billion in wages and salaries reducing the number of public servants, but how much is it going to have to spend on technology? Because you can’t just say “get AI to do it”. You need all the systems to talk to each other. At the very least, that’s where it should be starting. Instead of the finance minister coming on the radio saying she’s used AI to make a document. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
