Former Work and Income boss Christine Rankin has slammed Labour's "totally inexperienced" leadership after the Auditor General called out the public service for poorly measuring how taxpayer money was spent.

The Auditor General found a lot of government ministries did not measure whether the money they were spending was making a difference. Performance measures for the Education Ministry, for example, included how many times the website was visited.

According to Rankin, the timing for the Auditor General's criticism was obvious - the gauntlet was being thrown down for the incoming government, and Prime Minister elect Christopher Luxon to pick up.

"This has gone on, and on, under a Labour government which is so wishy-washy," Rankin told Heather Du-Plessis Allan Drive.

"They've never run a dairy, let alone a large business ... here comes a [new] Prime Minister who understands what it's like to run a business and keep people accountable."

Keeping people accountable, Rankin said, looked like setting KPIs based on how much money the organisation had received and "this filters right down the organisation".

She said when she was appointed as head of Work and Income, she was told to stop putting people into work for basic jobs because they weren't earning enough income and that it was better if they stayed on the benefit.

"That's the kind of attitude they have all the time," she said of the Labour government.

"Fourteen-thousand more public servants and what have we got for it? The biggest lot of brains in the country reside in the public sector and they're scared ... they can't take risks. Just buy a cardigan and keep quiet is the mantra."

Du-Plessis Allan suggested the reason behind the Government's strange KPIs was due to its knowledge their work hadn't produced any meaningful results, an idea that Rankin was quick to agree with.

"Totally," she responded.

"I believe Labour did not want to measure what was happening because they knew that it was really bad and they would be held accountable for that."

When Rankin was appointed first as general manager of Work and Income, then as chief executive, she explained she had a board over her for each term.

The board would hold her to account for every dollar the organisation spent - she was never allowed to provide bonuses to her employees, including those on the front line until every KPI set by the ministry was set.

"And that's exactly how it should be - what you measure is what you get."