Government also announced plans for cost cutting measures such as consolidating administrative functions among regional health authorities and the Centre for Health Information, as well as promoting regional clustering for the delivery of services. Their five year strategic deficit reduction plan includes published fiscal targets to measure performance. 

This review will be in addition to government's attrition plan, announced two days before the budget. The NLEC is supportive of this initiative, which has received an extremely negative reaction from union leaders. While the NLEC had lobbied for a more aggressive plan to bring spending down to the national average in three years instead of five, the NLEC supports attrition as a responsible and less impactful method of reducing the size of the public service.

In Ross Wiseman's speech yesterday, he expressed the need to "strategically right-size our public service", acknowledging the large public service per capita and the need to achieve efficiencies through a "streamlined public service."