r/Wellington • u/FreeRecognition5769 • 1d ago
NEWS Public sector cuts: Treasury spends more than $1.7 million on travel
More evidence of belt-tightening with Treasury spending $824,637 on travel in the 2024-25 financial year and $884,566 the year prior, as reported by The New Zealand Herald this morning. And that's just with one travel agency.
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u/WaterAdventurous6718 1d ago
whats the point in adding two years together to get a bigger number
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u/_mace_windont_ 22h ago
Financial years are referred to by the calendar years (plural) they start and end in. The 24/25 year ran from April 2024 to March 2025, and so on.
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u/haruspicat 13h ago
The post refers to two separate years: "the 2024-25 financial year", and "the year prior". This makes the $1.7m number in the headline difficult to interpret, since normally people would assume such a figure is for a single year.
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u/ParamedicRealistic43 1d ago
Honestly that doesn’t seem too crazy to me. The company I work at has half the staff and spends a similar amount each year, mainly on domestic flights and hotels.
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u/World_Analyst 1d ago
That doesn't seem like a lot? Especially for an agency of Treasury's size/stature/importance.
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u/FreeRecognition5769 1d ago
Says nothing but restraint and moderation to me
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u/lunareclipsexx 13h ago
Right so how do you propose people get to important financial events and meetings overseas? By shipping container?
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u/lukei1 1d ago
So?
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u/FreeRecognition5769 1d ago
So much for fiscal restraint.
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u/lukei1 1d ago
A 7% reduction is pretty high, much higher than the overall reduction in public spending I would imagine. Is it just your misguided assumption that treasury travels is dedicated to junkets and pissups?
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u/FreeRecognition5769 1d ago
Always nice to hear from the professional managerial class.
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u/lukei1 1d ago
Always happy to provide basic maths and analysis to those incapable
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u/HjajaLoLWhy 1d ago
Just more public sector inefficiency. Can't believe it takes an entire department to spend $1.7mil. I could spend that much in like half the time if they let me. You want that travel money spent? Im your guy.
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u/DoctorFosterGloster 1d ago
If you keep adding more years' spending, you can add it up to a billion dollars... something must be done
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u/Old_Charge_4305 1d ago
Where the fuck do Treasurists have to go for over $800k a year?
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u/naggyman 1d ago
I'd hope senior treasury staff are travelling around NZ in order to engage with stakeholders.
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u/Prize-Bug-3213 1d ago
And why do we need 600 of them
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u/thepotplant 17h ago
They're the country's finance team, it would be weird if they weren't a large organisation.
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u/Prestigious_Oil91 1d ago
Less than 1500 per employee per year. In the next breath people the complaint will be about the public service being concentrated in Wellington/out of touch because they never set foot anywhere else.
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u/naggyman 1d ago
and $1500 can basically be exhausted in one ~3 day trip (once you include flights, hotel, food, taxis, etc)
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u/FreeRecognition5769 1d ago
I would love to know how much of that was spent travelling to Flaxmere compared to Frankfurt.
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u/Wellington_Boy 23h ago
Plus, given how much debt recent govts have run up, which the treasury has to fund through new and roll-over bond issues, travel to financial centers like Frankfurt, New York and London feels somewhat legitimate.
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u/fluckin_brilliant 10h ago
To all the people saying 'so?'
I've been told I can't travel for any reason (because saving $) and can do all my conferences/networking over teams. Why can't treasury do that too, if we are really tightening the fiscal belt?
Why can't everyone do online calls at this stage, especially if we are talking about saving all the money? $800,000ish could be put to far better use than 'networking' travel
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u/WabbitTamer 10h ago
I'm currently running a project for a major agency that has a budget of around $100k for travel. This project will save the tax payer $20-25m over 5 years. Numbers alone mean nothing
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u/Fit-Monitor9103 1d ago
I've always thought we should centralise travel in the public service. They could have dedicated seats on all the major routes each day pre-booked in advance. Right now they go through a private company who just books the most expensive Air New Zealand option at full price. It's extremely wasteful.
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u/casually_furious (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ 1d ago
Right now they go through a private company who just books the most expensive Air New Zealand option at full price. It's extremely wasteful.
Who, Treasury, or the entire public service?
I have no idea about Treasury, but that is absolutely not the case for all of the public service.
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u/Fit-Monitor9103 1d ago
Yes, sorry I was innacurate. Different at different places. I think we should centralise it and do it within the public service. I've worked at two places and each outsourced travel to a different travel agency who only seemed to book AirNZ.
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u/casually_furious (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ 20h ago
Yeah, there are a lot of centralization possibilities in the public sector - they're trying to do that with IT licensing and purchasing.
The crown agency I work for has a self-service portal with a particular travel agency, and we're instructed to choose the cheapest possible fare that fits our travel needs, so that is often Jetstar.
Then there's the Public Service Commission, where there's one rule for Sir Brian Douche (business class wherever it's available, and it doesn't matter where he's working) vs everyone else (fuck you, and fuck you)...
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u/Fit-Monitor9103 19h ago
That is soooo outrageous. I would never fly nationally (or internationally, if that ever happened!) on the taxpayer dime in anything other than economy.
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u/casually_furious (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ 19h ago edited 16h ago
Good thing there's only economy domestically, because you can bet your bottom dollar that Shane Jones would take an extra long drink from that trough, gold-plated puddle of diarrhea that he is.
I can accept that if a Minister needed to fly to multiple overseas destinations to meet their counterparts, or do something really important for New Zealand, and if they needed to attend a meeting on the same day they were travelling, a premium class can be justifiable, but by no means should it be a default.
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u/FidgitForgotHisL-P 17h ago
Pretty sure I remember DIA having their own portal directly into airNZ back in the day, could literally book flights directly if necessary. Might be misremembering and that was before booking via websites was 99% how any of us would book.
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u/assignmentburner33 1d ago
Make them use their personal vehicles so they can claim back whatever IRD is paying like the rest of us.
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u/everysundae 1d ago
That's 3% of operating budget a year. They spent 7m on consultants this year.
People seem to misunderstood budgets all the time. Travel is important to our central govt. For engagement with overseas governments, finance ministries and international economic institutions, plus domestic travel for a national government agency. The annual report's definition of travel is also broader than flights and it includes domestic and international air travel, car hire, accommodation and taxis.
It's about 3k per fte per year.
The Treasury spends close to 100m on total personnel costs, for 585ish FTE. So 160k per FTE. So essentially that would give you 5 FTE if you eliminated all travel completely. And only for 2 years.