It comes as the Government looks to run a tight ship in its annual Budget to be unveiled later this month.
“There was a bit of spending that was out of control, when you get an 80 percent uplift in Government spending you expect to see some results on the other side – and we didn’t see any results on the other side,” Bagrie said of the former Labour administration.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s Government has piled pressure on the public sector to foster a lower-cost environment. The Coalition earlier called for annual public service cost savings of between 6.5 and 7.5 percent.
In addition, it’s also scrapped multiple projects started under the previous Labour Government.
“What we’re seeing at the moment is a fair bit of ‘cancelnomics,'” Bagrie said.
“The problem with ‘cancelnomics’ is, at some stage, you’ve got to shift it to ‘can-donomics’ – what are we going to be doing on the other side?
“You can’t just cancel those ferry projects and not have plan b on the other side; you can’t just cancel all those education buildings and not have plan b on the other side, and we’re still morphing into plan b.”
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