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About 15% of the workforce at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner could lose their jobs, according to the Public Service Association - but the government says the crown entity has not been asked to make any savings in this year's Budget.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) has proposed cutting nine roles while creating two new ones, telling staff the government was refusing to increase its funding.
There are a current total of 46 filled positions.
Among the roles under threat were staff in the team that investigates the "most serious privacy complaints" - including complaints of a sexual nature, according to the PSA.
The government was "deliberately undermining" a "critical watchdog" and ignoring repeated warnings to properly fund the OPC, the PSA said.
National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said it was the "direct result of a government that has known for years this office didn't have enough money to do its job properly, and chose not to fix it".
The OPC was "already overwhelmed", she said.
"OPC's own figures show privacy complaints are up 21 percent and serious privacy breach notifications are up as much as 43 percent in the past year."
The entity's annual report from 2026 stated its funding "continues to be limited".
"Even when our funding was increased it was to a level below what we had recommended to implement the significant new responsibilities and powers that the Act provided us.
"Following these increases, high inflation and cost savings measures subsequently diminished our funding in real terms."
It noted the entity's ability to run deficits had come to an end.
Fitzsimons pointed to the ManageMyHealth breach which exposed the health information of 127,000 New Zealanders in January as an example of what was at stake.
"And yet, at the exact moment new and increasingly intrusive technologies are making privacy harder to protect, the government's answer is to cut the people whose job is to protect it, while ignoring all the evidence of harm that is rising."
She said complaints were taking between several months and a year to be resolved.
OPC's dedicated Māori engagement role was also at risk, folding "what's left of it into another team's job description".
"That's a downgrade of the office's Treaty obligations, buried inside a cost-cutting exercise, part and parcel of what the government has done across the public sector."
Fitzsimons said the PSA's members were "devastated".
Public Service Minister Paul Goldsmith said tough decisions have to be made, given the government was operating in a "tight fiscal environment".
"As a country we are still running substantial deficits. We are serious about getting the country's finances back in order.
"I'd note the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was not asked to make any savings in this year's Budget."
