"For the govt's managerial class, the primary purpose of the state is to create high income jobs and lucrative contracts for the cognitive elite..."

"Our fire trucks are breaking down, the road toll is up and we’re desperately in need of more nurses. But rather than tackle these urgent issues, the government drops billions on consultants, comms staff and various other removed, abstract thinkers...
    "It’s almost as if the primary role of the administrative state is shifting from serving the people to the redistribution of wealth to the staffers, lawyers, PR companies, managers and consultancy firms that work in them, or for them. A billion dollars a year in public sector consultancy is an awful lot of money when you’re running out of teachers and nurses because you don’t pay them enough, and the fire trucks are breaking down...
    "For [the government's] managerial class the primary purpose of the transport agency and the rest of the state is to create high income jobs and lucrative contracts for the cognitive elite – they are the true value creators, after all – and to deliver media campaigns celebrating the bravery of their visions, the nobility of their aspirations; to affirm that they are the good and smart people. The actual safety conditions of provincial roads are largely irrelevant.... the decision not to fast-track nurses into the country [is similar]. Nursing is a credentialed, moderately well paid profession. But nurses are not knowledge workers the way medical doctors and some other health professionals are. Nurses work almost entirely in the real not the abstract, therefore [with this view] they can’t be adding 'real' value to the health system, any more than safety barriers installed by uneducated manual labourers can reduce traffic fatalities, or fire trucks can put out fires....
    "I’m not arguing that [this] perspective explains everything (or that I agree with [it]). But I’ve come to the end of this essay in early August, and the health minister Andrew Little has just announced a suite of measures to address staff shortages in the health sector. No, he’s not changing the immigration rules for nurses – but the government is launching a media campaign, teaming up with Shortland Street to promote nursing as a career. The cost of the campaign will not be made public."
           ~ Danyl Mclauchlan, from his op-ed 'An Administrative Revolution'