The number of staff employed by the Ministry for the Environment rose 39% in the three and a half years to December last year, including an additional 58 since June.
A Ministry for the Environment (MfE) spokesperson said the increase from 648 full time equivalent staff from June 30 2021 to 1068 as at December 31 last year was due to substantial programmes that included reforming the Resource Management Act and dealing with climate change, freshwater and waste policy.
“Much of this funding was time-limited and due to peak this year.”
These figures represent permanent staff as well as staff on fixed-term contracts, and from July 1 2020 to June 30 2023, 35.2% of appointments were employed on fixed-term contracts.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has this financial year found $221 million in savings and has 87 fewer employees than a year earlier.
MPI director-general Ray Smith has released data showing that as of April 30 it employed 3669 full time equivalent staff, compared to 3756 a year earlier.
It had 3539 staff in June 2021-22 and 3450 in June 2020-21.
“As part of our current change process we are proposing a further net reduction of 384 positions, of which around 40% are currently vacant,” he said.
The coalition government requires government departments to find annual savings of 7.5% and has been critical of a 4.1% increase in government employees in the six months from June last year.
Smith said it is meeting those targets through a mix of programme and staff reductions and managing costs such as on contractors and consultants.
“In the 2022-23 financial year, operating expenditure in this area was $57.8m, and we are forecasting this to reduce to $38.2 million in 2023-24.”
The $221m in savings comes from $4m of unspent Jobs for Nature funding, $188m in climate change programme savings requested by the previous government’s Rapid Savings Exercise, and $29m from discontinued industry transformation plans.
Smith said the MPI received more than $1.5 billion in both the 2022 and 2023 budgets.
This was used for programmes such as climate change, eradicating Mycoplasma bovis, Food Safety and Biosecurity systems, establishing services to support farmers, foresters and growers and the recovery following extreme weather events in the North Island.
Smith said management is working through 1500 submissions received on its change proposals and final decisions will be made in mid-May.
An MfE spokesperson said it won’t know how many staff will lose their jobs, or the areas from where those losses will occur, until the government finalises its budget.
“We will then seek feedback from staff on a proposal to reduce the organisation in size.”
Last October the MfE introduced recruitment controls in anticipation of a reduction in its baseline funding.
Those moves included filling most vacancies internally, requiring executive signoff of any vacancies to be filled and not extending fixed-term contracts for contractors or consultants past June 30 2024.
Last year the MfE launched a review of its organisational structure and operating model, which resulted in the disestablishment of 45 Tier 2 and Tier 3 roles and the creation of 33 new roles.
“Due to recruitment controls put in place leading into the change process as well as natural attrition, remaining affected employees were able to be reassigned and appointed to the new roles.
“No employees were made redundant through this process.”
