This wonderful mashup of polling booth results in Wellington and Google maps by the wellingtonista and some excellent statistics released today by the State Services Commission on staff numbers and salaries make for some interesting reading.Have a good look through these statistics. They show a few things.

First, this report should have been publicised last Friday, not a week after the election.

Second, it shows the Labour-led government’s line that public servant numbers were increasing at the coal face rather than in the office blocks of Wellington was simply wrong.

Numbers at the front line in the core public service, which includes social, health and education workers and contact centre workers, actually fell by 29 to 10,034 in the last year, while numbers of administrative, policy advice, HR, legal, managerial and support staff rose 1628 to 35,900.

So it’s not too surprising which way those