Badges

Bernard Hickey doesn’t want no stinking badges!

This is the guts of the problem that faces public servants on the front line and taxpayers alike. Too much money is being spent centrally on dreaming up fancy ideas for the workers at the coal face to carry out, while the poor people at the coal face don’t have the resources to do some real public service.

Talk to any nurse, teacher, police officer, principal, social worker and there is enormous resentment and anger at how much money is spent by head office dreaming up policy frameworks, policy documents, communications strategies and monitoring regimes. Not nearly enough money is spent actually providing the service.

I’m all for government employing doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, police officers and road builders. But why so many bureaucrats working out of fancy office buildings writing policy papers and ordering the workers around? Any business would ask the question: Why so much middle management?

Schools seem to getting quite militant with the ever increasing workload being placed on them by the Education Ministry and the Government, when they see stupidity such as this sucking up funds they could do with.