Final plan for Budget cuts ‘in two months’

Press, 16 March 1982, Page 6

Final plan for Budget cuts ‘in two months’

PA ' Wellington The Government’s plan to trim $4OO million, or 3 per cent, from its Budget would take two months to complete, said the chairman of the State Services Commission, Dr Mervyn Probine, yesterday. It was impossible to say yet whether the exercise would be painful but it was very unlikely that anybody would lose their job. Dr Probine said, “The Public Service has no history of redundancy and our turnover is sufficient to cope with fluctuations in staff just through normal attrition.” All Government departments had been asked before Christmas to submit proposals by late -January for making the 3 per cent cut in spending.. He would not say which departments, if- any, had been reluctant or slow in meeting this requirement. Asked which ones had done a good job, he said, '“I think all departments are making an honest and genuine attempt to come up with the proposals required. But in a thing like this, there has to be discussion. There has to be some too-ing and fro-ing:

it is a rational exercise.” Dr Probine said that this was not the first time that spending cuts had been proposed and implemented in the Public Service. Public Service growth had been restrained very substantially in the last five or six years and this had been important in allowing resources to be reallocated from low-priority to high-' priority areas. He did not anticipate any industrial problems in the service as a result of the spending cuts. “We have a record in handling these things,” he said. “There are always area's where individuals may be concerned but we aim to be a good employer and we are sufficiently flexible by virtue of our size to accommodate change.” Dr Probine said that the 3 per cent figure which had been proposed as the reduction in spending was not an arbitrary one. “It is carefully considered and well planned. There is no basis for suggesting the cuts are arbitrary. The figure is based on the need to reduce the Government deficit before borrowing.”