Tena kōe Your Worship, Mayor Andrew Little, 

We hope this open letter finds you well. 

We are writing to share our views on the Future Fit Pōneke Report released by the Wellington City Council on 24 November 2025. 

Wellington has experienced first-hand the impacts of the National, New Zealand First and Act’s slash and burn cuts to the public service. We have long been a proud public service city which shows up to work every day for the hardworking people of Aotearoa. 

Wellingtonians know that we cannot cut our way towards a productive modern economy, and that cuts degrade, not enhance, the capacity of the public service. The morale of public servants, including those who are now jobseekers, is extremely low and dispirited. Empty shopfronts, shuttered businesses, and tens of thousands of jobseekers are the direct result of this Government’s reckless austerity agenda. 

We share concerns outlined by the Public Service Association (PSA) about the flaws of the Future Fit Pōneke report. We agree with the PSA that the Wellington City Council provides services that other councils do not, and that Wellington City Council service an extra 22,000 people that come to the city for work that do not necessarily make up the ratepayer base of the city. 

The report suggests reducing the workforce by hundreds of employees. This could be fulfilled in a number of ways – for example, outright redundancies, or through managed vacancies. We want to emphasise that managed vacancies can be just as harmful as outright redundancies if it places the burden of increased workload on those who remain. This approach is what the Government is doing in the health system which Labour and the PSA have been opposed to for obvious reasons that we agree with. 

We also agree with their critiques about the flawed assumptions around the use of unproven technology to replace human labour. ChatGPT cannot pick litter up at a park or provide authentic human support that librarians provide – only humans can.  

 We call on you to: 

1. Publicly commit to ruling out implementing any of the outlined cuts proposed in the report. 

2. Work with the staff and the unions to improve critical services in a public-centered way. 

3. Stand up against the ongoing public service cuts that have caused so much devastation in our city. 

Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to working with you on this issue. 

Kind regards, 
Francisco Hernandez MP, Green Spokesperson for Public Services 
Tamatha Paul, MP for Wellington Central and Julie Anne Genter, MP for Rongotai.