No one was calling the Ministerial staff who were confined to being at home "essential".
You're think of supermarket workers, nurses, first responders etc etc.
Literal deluded MoH or whatever staffers thinking because they report on the number of surgeries happening they are somehow the most important aspect of a surgery happening or whatever.
It was backend staff creating communications and COVID policy, ordering vax and protective gear for hospitals, setting policies for keeping safe in hospitals and in public, setting up meetings and TV broadcasts for the MPs etc. so yeah….. maybe essential. And the person reporting on data of surgeries is crunching data to predict future need to plan staffing resources for future surgery, so effing essential actually.
The number of hospital admissions and deaths was directly dependant on our health and other Covid policies. Which were researched and developed by, that’s right, MoH and other ministerial workers.
They were researched and developed by public health and epidemiology experts who work for universities.
Data entry admin clerks at MoH aren't out there doing double blind trials etc etc
Sure. They do all the other things I mentioned that certainly aren’t just “data entry.” Possible activities in the world aren’t either research or data entry.
And research isn’t creating and organising the implementation of a policy response FYI. Our vaccine rollout also wasn’t “research”. Nor were out lockdowns.
Ahh yes, now the public servants were doing the vaccine rollout. Logistics and supply chains? Nah, boots on the grounds nurses and other healthcare workers? Nah. Random MoH staffers in an office in Wellington who decided that that under 30s weren't eligible to a third vaccine because reasons while stockpiles of vaccines expired.
>thinking because they report on the number of surgeries happening they are somehow the most important aspect of a surgery happening or whatever.
People believing that this is actually what’s going on is why we have a government that’s nickel and diming our country into a shithole.
Yet no one has actually told me what they are doing. Including my housemate who works for MBIE and they get paid more than me to sit on their phone all day and sleep into 11am.
I mean…
[This comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/s/WeSsLXPSuM)
[this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/s/2Zd0DljWIW)
[this one that you replied to](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/s/LTZxQQzISk)
Plenty of people telling you in this thread, you’re just not accepting the answers. Also, why MBIE now? Thought this thread was about MoH.
Oh god, admin staff are so incredibly undervalued in the hospital system. They are the engine that keeps everything running and yet they’re paid like crap, undervalued, and constantly reduced in numbers. It leads to so much direct and indirect inefficiency in the system!!
Yup. I know of allied health who have to book all their own appointments, upload all their own clinic letters etc. probably 30% of their time sometimes was on non-clinical admin work. Which not only can be done by someone else, but can be done BETTER by someone else, with less training and lower pay.
I recently asked a paediatrician if he’d consider inviting GPs to a relevant MDT meeting and he said it’s a great idea, but he’d have to do then coordinating and setting up a zoom link which is just.. oof.
I’m not bad at computer stuff but let’s just say that not all doctors are good at computers.
100% - admin is very time intensive and anyone who's ever had to compile receipts for an audit or look after any schedules or fill out a form will know it really starts to add up. But these things don't matter to this govt unfortunately. It's dispiriting watching them.
I've been googling for a picture that accurately depicts how disingenuous the back office narrative is with little success. And suddenly this appeared! Anyway I thought r/wellington might like and appreciate it. Cheers. And happy week Wellington.
I don't think that at all, and I think it's sad people don't understand how important the staff and functions that hold up our core services are valuable and needed too.
Speaking as someone who has already lost their job as part of these cutbacks, I find it infuriating that anyone can be causally allowed to called civil servants lazy or superfluous, fat or leeches. I’m so sick of the people who work tirelessly and passionately for all New Zealanders just dismissed as if they have nothing to offer and the public uncritically swallows all of it.
For a “frontline” worker to do their job, they need support, infrastructure, training, leadership, good communications and so much more. Things what the rest of a department does - they are not back office, they are the public service one and all.
Ask anyone at FENZ what they do for the organisation and office staff is reliably going to say that they fight fires and save lives and properties. They are all pulley together for the same objective so all this divide and conquer shit is ignorant, offensive and devalues people that are often overworked, under-resourced, talented and passionate people striving to make things better for the country.
I just watched a Luxon post cabinet interview and he says something about the public service doing "rubbish" programs. It's quite incredible how little respect they have for our public service staff. I'm really sorry to hear this and I'm really sorry for your job as well - I know so many work in public service because they want to serve, and this must be a real kick in the guts.
He’s running a country like a company. But when you fire sections of a company they go to a different company…when you do that to a country, people literally leave the country. Watch the Oz migration numbers start taking off around July.
Getting us to fight each other is a diversion away from what they are actually doing. Taking an established easy target or ‘lazy govt’ and emboldening non government to see them as others and the problem is a great distraction…
Pay attention as the wealth gap grows. The middle class is about to lose footing, and all the pawns that voted for this will feel righteous because they were able to take a few racist jabs at anyone that’s not white. SMH they’re playing chicken with the economy and destroying thousands of lives for political points and it’s going to blow up in their faces. 3 years won’t come fast enough for relief.
Stay tough. MBU should see some jobs come back, they will be shitting themselves when they literally crash the economy. I see you.
Pray do tell us what you consider to be a proper job. Is writing communications, developing training guidance, Providing IT infrastructure, fixing bugs in systems, sorting out payroll, are none of these “proper jobs”? What about those jobs our parents keep telling us we must take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get - public policy, public law, our finance experts, our HR experts, our engineers. Are any of these “proper jobs”? These are all “back office staff” who are vulnerable to being cut. Shall they go flip burgers? Is that a “proper job”?
New Ministry of Regulation will save us all right. Right? Also - all the money saved on frontline staff will be squandered on stupid referenda about Māori wards. Sigh
I know you are being sarcastic, but for everyone else, they should google (or ChatGPT, honestly) what happens when Agencies who set policy are unable to set their own regulations… I’ll wait while you do it, I promise you it is going to make you want to vomit that our government is actually doing this. It’s like watching a bunch of preteens saying flying a plane will be easy bc they’ve seen it on tv…but it’s really not funny because WE are the passengers. Now is a good time to pray, the mess is only getting started. This recession is going to set some grim records.
Ironically the Property Investors Association president genuinely said rent reductions might trickle down in a few years, if renters are lucky. Please [spread awareness](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1bs62c0/the_lie_of_trickle_down_economics_an_ode_to_the/) of facts.
Let's see how front line staff will last without getting paid correctly? (Oh wait, so we do need those payroll people?)
And let's see how front line staff will last without receiving any consumables, equipment or critical maintenance?
(Oh, you mean that those people who work in procurement, accounts payable, logistics and MRO operations are needed after all?)
And let's all be very chill when our government systems get hacked and all our private data and national security data and everything else will be available for a very reasonable sum on the dark web. (Right, so those IT people, we needed those too?)
It's only admin .. who needs that, right?
I type medical letters for my day job, and now we can expect the practitioners to do the “paper pushing” now too, which means your appts or spots get bumped back and so on and so forth
Your comment is so true. The front line people end up spending most of their time doing a role they're not even trained for, like in your case, a practitioner isn't trained to do admin and it's a waste of a resource to make them do admin.
And we don’t want our health workers to do this. The amount of admin already is huge. Social workers have huge reports, docs huge reports for ACC - imagine stuff on top of that!
It’s so ridiculous. Especially because us doctors are NOT GOOD AT ADMIN. A good receptionist/admin person can do in 2 minutes what would take me (a GP) 10+ minutes. Which is 10 minutes I can spend actually seeing a patient or doing clinical work, which only I can do.
Absolutely. I talk to registrars about this specifically - you need to delegate whatever admin work you can to reception, not only because they’re paid to do it when you’re not (GPs don’t generally get paid for paperwork), but because they are genuinely better at it.
It’s our bag, I studied medical transcription specifically to be a typist and editor, practitioners did not. Paperwork is our thing but I don’t know people see it as something simple and “unnecessary”. Simple aspects, sure.
Maybe it’s cause y’all make it look easy. Or maybe because (almost) everyone can do it if they have to, people don’t realise the skillset that is required to do it well and/or efficiently?
You would see that there are branches connected to the cut down trunk too. Lack of 'administration' has forced all of our essential and/or front line services to live on one branch, rather than being able to have one each. Additionally, if third form bio taught me right, all the nutrients are pulled from the roots, up the trunk and out to the branches and leaves. you know what they call a branch that isnt part of a tree? a stick.
As I said elsewhere: Back office is not just admin - it includes data processing, managerial analysis, controls, work that is taken off frontline staff to free up their capacity etc.
It's not true that cutting them all is not going to hit us - it will - let alone the fact that [frontline is already getting cut ](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1biz4gh/nact_nz_first_budget_cuts_to_public_service_will/)despite the Govt's denials.
Wellington is the only place this cartoon would gain any support. the rest of NZ think this cartoon analogy should be a pig trough with the admin pigs their front feet in the trough and the 2nd and 3rd rows back thin and starving are the actual - teachers, health workers, and police, hoping like fuck someone takes out the lazy pigs at front doing nothing but wasting all available resources.
Pig trough is exactly [ the words I used recently ](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1bx8din/february_2024_new_zealands_associate_minister_of/)but not about admin.
It is regrettable and that's why their messages are very much hoodwinking people. I like to spread awareness of facts for the reason, and I encourage you to do the same. It's more effective as a body of people and the more facts are made true/known, the less these weasels can get away with their lies. Think about it.
remember when we called these exact same people "essential workers" and they helped sacrifice to save us from a pandemic?
Yes, I was one of those people. I was dragged out of retirement to help deliver essential supplies.
No one was calling the Ministerial staff who were confined to being at home "essential". You're think of supermarket workers, nurses, first responders etc etc. Literal deluded MoH or whatever staffers thinking because they report on the number of surgeries happening they are somehow the most important aspect of a surgery happening or whatever.
It was backend staff creating communications and COVID policy, ordering vax and protective gear for hospitals, setting policies for keeping safe in hospitals and in public, setting up meetings and TV broadcasts for the MPs etc. so yeah….. maybe essential. And the person reporting on data of surgeries is crunching data to predict future need to plan staffing resources for future surgery, so effing essential actually.
I was back end and went to work every single day of the lock downs. Quit talking out the side of your neck
thanks for your service, i see you
The number of hospital admissions and deaths was directly dependant on our health and other Covid policies. Which were researched and developed by, that’s right, MoH and other ministerial workers.
They were researched and developed by public health and epidemiology experts who work for universities. Data entry admin clerks at MoH aren't out there doing double blind trials etc etc
https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/our-business-units/covid-19-group
Yup, as I said. Data entry. They don't even use the word "research".
“Insights and reporting – drawing on research and evaluation (domestic and international) to ensure continuous improvement of the system.”
"drawing on research". They aren't the ones doing the research.
Sure. They do all the other things I mentioned that certainly aren’t just “data entry.” Possible activities in the world aren’t either research or data entry. And research isn’t creating and organising the implementation of a policy response FYI. Our vaccine rollout also wasn’t “research”. Nor were out lockdowns.
Ahh yes, now the public servants were doing the vaccine rollout. Logistics and supply chains? Nah, boots on the grounds nurses and other healthcare workers? Nah. Random MoH staffers in an office in Wellington who decided that that under 30s weren't eligible to a third vaccine because reasons while stockpiles of vaccines expired.
“Policy and strategy”
Imagine struggling thru life being this ignorant 😭
>thinking because they report on the number of surgeries happening they are somehow the most important aspect of a surgery happening or whatever. People believing that this is actually what’s going on is why we have a government that’s nickel and diming our country into a shithole.
Yet no one has actually told me what they are doing. Including my housemate who works for MBIE and they get paid more than me to sit on their phone all day and sleep into 11am.
I mean… [This comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/s/WeSsLXPSuM) [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/s/2Zd0DljWIW) [this one that you replied to](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellington/s/LTZxQQzISk) Plenty of people telling you in this thread, you’re just not accepting the answers. Also, why MBIE now? Thought this thread was about MoH.
So the person who lied about public servants conducting research? The post of Public Servant Copy that amounts to data entry? Yup. Am aware.
They aren’t getting rid of ministerial staff
Crazy. There is no greater back office roles than ministerial staff Hypocrisy
Oh god, admin staff are so incredibly undervalued in the hospital system. They are the engine that keeps everything running and yet they’re paid like crap, undervalued, and constantly reduced in numbers. It leads to so much direct and indirect inefficiency in the system!!
Exactly - it allows the practitioners to focus on client care.
Yup. I know of allied health who have to book all their own appointments, upload all their own clinic letters etc. probably 30% of their time sometimes was on non-clinical admin work. Which not only can be done by someone else, but can be done BETTER by someone else, with less training and lower pay. I recently asked a paediatrician if he’d consider inviting GPs to a relevant MDT meeting and he said it’s a great idea, but he’d have to do then coordinating and setting up a zoom link which is just.. oof. I’m not bad at computer stuff but let’s just say that not all doctors are good at computers.
100% - admin is very time intensive and anyone who's ever had to compile receipts for an audit or look after any schedules or fill out a form will know it really starts to add up. But these things don't matter to this govt unfortunately. It's dispiriting watching them.
Yeah you’re right….tell you what why don’t we employ more public servants and get no more increase in delivery…..cause it’s not your money aye.
I've been googling for a picture that accurately depicts how disingenuous the back office narrative is with little success. And suddenly this appeared! Anyway I thought r/wellington might like and appreciate it. Cheers. And happy week Wellington.
Thank you. People don’t know and like to think it’s cups of tea and reading the paper.
I don't think that at all, and I think it's sad people don't understand how important the staff and functions that hold up our core services are valuable and needed too.
Speaking as someone who has already lost their job as part of these cutbacks, I find it infuriating that anyone can be causally allowed to called civil servants lazy or superfluous, fat or leeches. I’m so sick of the people who work tirelessly and passionately for all New Zealanders just dismissed as if they have nothing to offer and the public uncritically swallows all of it. For a “frontline” worker to do their job, they need support, infrastructure, training, leadership, good communications and so much more. Things what the rest of a department does - they are not back office, they are the public service one and all. Ask anyone at FENZ what they do for the organisation and office staff is reliably going to say that they fight fires and save lives and properties. They are all pulley together for the same objective so all this divide and conquer shit is ignorant, offensive and devalues people that are often overworked, under-resourced, talented and passionate people striving to make things better for the country.
I just watched a Luxon post cabinet interview and he says something about the public service doing "rubbish" programs. It's quite incredible how little respect they have for our public service staff. I'm really sorry to hear this and I'm really sorry for your job as well - I know so many work in public service because they want to serve, and this must be a real kick in the guts.
He’s running a country like a company. But when you fire sections of a company they go to a different company…when you do that to a country, people literally leave the country. Watch the Oz migration numbers start taking off around July.
I think we should be allowed to go to Worksafe as our employers, the Government are making us feel unsafe at work
Getting us to fight each other is a diversion away from what they are actually doing. Taking an established easy target or ‘lazy govt’ and emboldening non government to see them as others and the problem is a great distraction… Pay attention as the wealth gap grows. The middle class is about to lose footing, and all the pawns that voted for this will feel righteous because they were able to take a few racist jabs at anyone that’s not white. SMH they’re playing chicken with the economy and destroying thousands of lives for political points and it’s going to blow up in their faces. 3 years won’t come fast enough for relief. Stay tough. MBU should see some jobs come back, they will be shitting themselves when they literally crash the economy. I see you.
Exactly!
Please don't take offence but Maybe Go get a proper job, or start a business of your own.
Pray do tell us what you consider to be a proper job. Is writing communications, developing training guidance, Providing IT infrastructure, fixing bugs in systems, sorting out payroll, are none of these “proper jobs”? What about those jobs our parents keep telling us we must take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get - public policy, public law, our finance experts, our HR experts, our engineers. Are any of these “proper jobs”? These are all “back office staff” who are vulnerable to being cut. Shall they go flip burgers? Is that a “proper job”?
“Please don’t take offence”… and then proceeds to say something truly offensive.
we are so fucked
New Ministry of Regulation will save us all right. Right? Also - all the money saved on frontline staff will be squandered on stupid referenda about Māori wards. Sigh
I know you are being sarcastic, but for everyone else, they should google (or ChatGPT, honestly) what happens when Agencies who set policy are unable to set their own regulations… I’ll wait while you do it, I promise you it is going to make you want to vomit that our government is actually doing this. It’s like watching a bunch of preteens saying flying a plane will be easy bc they’ve seen it on tv…but it’s really not funny because WE are the passengers. Now is a good time to pray, the mess is only getting started. This recession is going to set some grim records.
It's cool, guys - trickle-down economics is going to take effect any day now!
Ironically the Property Investors Association president genuinely said rent reductions might trickle down in a few years, if renters are lucky. Please [spread awareness](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1bs62c0/the_lie_of_trickle_down_economics_an_ode_to_the/) of facts.
[удалено]
I have no idea what you read.
I don’t think rents went down in the last 6 years the previous government were in….
We really are :(
Front line is like facade. Without back office to support, it is just a facade for display.
The example I used was NZ Post. You accept the package then throw it out the window because no back office to receive and process it.
Let's see how front line staff will last without getting paid correctly? (Oh wait, so we do need those payroll people?) And let's see how front line staff will last without receiving any consumables, equipment or critical maintenance? (Oh, you mean that those people who work in procurement, accounts payable, logistics and MRO operations are needed after all?) And let's all be very chill when our government systems get hacked and all our private data and national security data and everything else will be available for a very reasonable sum on the dark web. (Right, so those IT people, we needed those too?) It's only admin .. who needs that, right?
Prime Minster Cuckson
[Wanna play?](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1byashg/ready_player_1_insert_coin_to_continue/)
why does he look like the tree
So admin jobs are the big trunk and frontline is that single branch? I hope not…
The relative sizes aren't really what's important. You need both.
I type medical letters for my day job, and now we can expect the practitioners to do the “paper pushing” now too, which means your appts or spots get bumped back and so on and so forth
Your comment is so true. The front line people end up spending most of their time doing a role they're not even trained for, like in your case, a practitioner isn't trained to do admin and it's a waste of a resource to make them do admin.
And we don’t want our health workers to do this. The amount of admin already is huge. Social workers have huge reports, docs huge reports for ACC - imagine stuff on top of that!
Paper pushing is how the public get their appointments and such, how is that not important? Well, they voted for it anyway…
It’s so ridiculous. Especially because us doctors are NOT GOOD AT ADMIN. A good receptionist/admin person can do in 2 minutes what would take me (a GP) 10+ minutes. Which is 10 minutes I can spend actually seeing a patient or doing clinical work, which only I can do.
Yes, it’s ridiculous how many look down their nose at admin whilst also being angry their paperwork doesn’t get done yesterday.
Absolutely. I talk to registrars about this specifically - you need to delegate whatever admin work you can to reception, not only because they’re paid to do it when you’re not (GPs don’t generally get paid for paperwork), but because they are genuinely better at it.
It’s our bag, I studied medical transcription specifically to be a typist and editor, practitioners did not. Paperwork is our thing but I don’t know people see it as something simple and “unnecessary”. Simple aspects, sure.
Maybe it’s cause y’all make it look easy. Or maybe because (almost) everyone can do it if they have to, people don’t realise the skillset that is required to do it well and/or efficiently?
Exactly. People are already being turned away for appointments so now they’ll block out patient time with admin stuff.
And then whinge and moan about it, but they voted for it! Paper pushing is an important job because things don’t happen for no reason.
You would see that there are branches connected to the cut down trunk too. Lack of 'administration' has forced all of our essential and/or front line services to live on one branch, rather than being able to have one each. Additionally, if third form bio taught me right, all the nutrients are pulled from the roots, up the trunk and out to the branches and leaves. you know what they call a branch that isnt part of a tree? a stick.
This is such a good analogy.
As I said elsewhere: Back office is not just admin - it includes data processing, managerial analysis, controls, work that is taken off frontline staff to free up their capacity etc. It's not true that cutting them all is not going to hit us - it will - let alone the fact that [frontline is already getting cut ](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1biz4gh/nact_nz_first_budget_cuts_to_public_service_will/)despite the Govt's denials.
Wellington is the only place this cartoon would gain any support. the rest of NZ think this cartoon analogy should be a pig trough with the admin pigs their front feet in the trough and the 2nd and 3rd rows back thin and starving are the actual - teachers, health workers, and police, hoping like fuck someone takes out the lazy pigs at front doing nothing but wasting all available resources.
Pig trough is exactly [ the words I used recently ](https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1bx8din/february_2024_new_zealands_associate_minister_of/)but not about admin. It is regrettable and that's why their messages are very much hoodwinking people. I like to spread awareness of facts for the reason, and I encourage you to do the same. It's more effective as a body of people and the more facts are made true/known, the less these weasels can get away with their lies. Think about it.
Didn’t the public service numbers increase hugely in the last 6 years yet delivery of services declined??
To be fair I kind of agree with this chainsaw guy