It will be some weeks before final decisions are made on the number of redundancies at the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment.
Tina Paterson, director of service delivery and change at the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), said initial proposals are for a net reduction of 384 positions, of which around 40% are currently vacant.
“The proposals are currently subject to consultation with our staff. Our focus is on our staff during this process,” she said.
A Ministry for the Environment (MfE) spokesperson said a final decision on the number of people to lose their jobs has not been made.
Paterson said the MPI intends to not reduce frontline services and statutory roles such as veterinarians, animal welfare, fishery and food compliance officers or biosecurity teams at the border.
“However, we are proposing changes to roles and reporting lines in other areas of MPI, including the disestablishment of some positions.”
Its proposal for Biosecurity NZ is to disestablish or significantly change 130.5 positions, but to create 31 new positions and remove 31 vacancies.
Within Agriculture and Investment Services, 82.6 positions will change or be disestablished, 35 new positions will be proposed and 32 vacancies will be removed.
The proposal will see 48.3 positions change or be removed within Policy and Trade, with 22 new positions created and 28.8 vacant positions removed.
A further 13.5 positions within NZ Food Safety will be removed, eight created and two vacancies removed.
Numerically, changes at Fisheries NZ will be largely neutral, 21.6 positions significantly changed or disestablished, 20 new roles created and 10 vacancies removed.
The NZ Forest Service is proposing to remove or significantly change 20 positions, create eight new positions and remove 15 vacancies.
Fourteen positions within the Māori Partnerships and Investment arm are subject to significant change or proposed to be disestablished. Ten new positions are proposed and 9.6 vacant positions will be removed.
An MfE spokesperson said expressions of interest in taking voluntary redundancy have to be lodged by this Friday (April 19).
It has no specific target for reducing staff numbers but following a review last year, it reduced its Tier 2 and 3 leadership cohort by 20%.
“MfE has also developed cost-saving proposals to support the 2024/25 budget reductions the finance minister announced for government agencies in the mini-Budget on December 20.
“Ministers are considering these proposals as part of the Budget 2024 process.”
The spokesperson said the combined impact of the government’s 7.5% savings target for MfE, the return of resource management implementation funding and an already declining baseline, will be significant.
“It is probable that we’ll need to go through a redundancy process to reduce in size.
“We won’t know how many staff will lose their jobs, or what areas of the organisation these losses will be in, until the government finalises its Budget 2024 on May 30.”
