Govt seeks to halt extra pay for staff fluent in te reo Māori

The Government is trying to figure out how to stop any more public servants getting extra pay for being proficient in te reo Māori.

But it concedes it cannot dump existing allowances.

“I will ... ask for advice on how we could stop these bonuses being negotiated into future collective agreements,” Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said.

“While we would not have initiated the bonuses ourselves, and while we do not support them, we are left with little choice but to implement them given they are contained in binding collective agreements.” Unions are promising a fight. “We'll be resisting that heavily and strongly,” the Public Service Association (PSA) said.

The primary teachers union NZEI said its thousands of members would oppose the government.

The Māori Language Commission Te Taura Whiri said it would be “a great shame” to curtail the allowances that had expanded under governments of every stripe since the 1980s.

It was something that had flourished under Labour, National and various coalitions without a problem, it said.

Te Taura Whiri had just gone online to meet growing demand, and had recently doubled the recommended top rate, to $7500 a year.

More than a dozen state agencies pay te reo allowances starting at $500 and topping out at $3500 a year.

The top rate recommended by the commission, of $3500, had stayed that way since 2003, till a recent inflation adjustment.

A list of 21 departments and ministries from the PSA showed 14, or two-thirds, had allowances negotiated within their collective pay deals, including Corrections, and the Ministries of Justice, Education and Environment; three other agencies pay staff to learn the language. National’s Simeon Brown, now a Cabinet minister, was quoted in July saying that if National won the election it would “remove” the payments.