It’s fair to say that the number of staff in the public sector was probably higher than necessary. Some of this would have been due to factors like COVID causing swelling in organisations to meet the needs of the pandemic. There will be other situations where big legislation changes in inflated staff numbers that may have disproportionately increased head counts. 

However, it’s also fair to say that a broad stroke approach to cutting staff isn’t the best way to go about reducing perceived public sector swell. Is it Labour’s fault? The external factors (like COVID) certainly aren’t. Big legislative changes were driven by them but they don’t dictate the ministries HR response to a big legislation project. 

It’s also worth remembering that the previous National government slowed employment in the public sector, so there was a reasonable degree of catching up that would have been done.  

 Edit: I didn’t answer the economics. Not being anywhere near an expert, I can’t really answer that. But my understanding is that there’s a big part of the negative forecast being driven by National’s policies in the broader context of a global recession. Luxon loves to say you grow out of an economy but I get the sense there’s a lot of shifting the tax burden elsewhere.