Written By: - Date published: 8:57 pm, April 17th, 2011 - 32 comments
This Herald story about spin doctor Brad Tattersfield was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Ministerial offices of the Prime Minister, Judith Collins, Paula Bennett, and the Chief Executive of the Department of Labour to “minimise scandal” is one example of the sort of back-room spending of public money I’d like to see cut.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, April 15th, 2011 - 49 comments
National pollster David Farrar reckons that its sweet for the elite to spend $100 a head on meals at the taxpayer’s expense. Same time as he’s sneering at a woman struggling to get by feeding four people on $200 a week. This is National’s New Zealand. The best for the elite. Cat food for the rest.
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, April 11th, 2011 - 19 comments
The Crown BMWs are back in the news. One will have a $1000 underseat heater to keep a worthy’s arse toasty. Based in Dunedin. For “long-distance and long-duration movements”. Hmm. Who flies to Dunedin for a 3 hour drive to Dipton occasionally? Guess you need that heater against the Southern cold when you’re used to balmy Karori.
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, April 6th, 2011 - 55 comments
Shivering in your earthquake-damaged home, wondering how you’ll come up with $190 a week for a campervan after your emergency benefit ends? Living on cat food because GST and price hikes put real food out of reach? Don’t worry, Pita Sharples to the rescue: he’s gifting 1.9 million taxpayer dollars to a hapu in his electorate to build an inflatable, plastic waka.
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, March 30th, 2011 - 58 comments
Key and English are trying to soften us up for big public service cuts this budget. They tell us it’ll just be ‘nice to haves’ and that the private sector will step in to fill the gap when they cut too close to the bone. The important thing to realise is that every time the public service doesn’t provide us with something either we have to buy it out of our own pockets (usually at greater cost) or we don’t get it at all.
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, February 19th, 2011 - 24 comments
The limo issue reveals everything wrong with the Key government in microcosm: greedy, elitist, hypocritical, liars. Against the background of the failing economy, it’s one hell of a bad look. But in monetary terms, it pales in to comparison beside their decision to cancel Cullen Fund contributions, which has now cost $334 million.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 pm, February 16th, 2011 - 36 comments
Key says he didn’t know about the BMW purchase. Funny cause on Tuesday, English was taking responsibility: “we could go out and buy second-hand cars but one way or another cars need to be maintained”. The Nats try to blame Labour but the contract Labour signed says replacing the cars was optional without penalty.
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, February 3rd, 2011 - 5 comments
Crushless Collins’ double-bunking money saver costing $2.6m.
Shock! Paying someone else to build and operate our schools won’t save money.
Nat-appointed public service chiefs paid to air-commute. Pay cuts for frontline.
Key smiles at launch of new science ministry, waves in $3m of science funding cuts.
Written By: - Date published: 6:19 am, December 14th, 2010 - 49 comments
Two years ago we had one of the best government balance sheets in the world. Key said we didn’t have a debt problem. Two years of him as PM, and we sure have one now. When we learn exactly how dire things are later today, remember that National brought this on us by borrowing $3 billion a year for tax cuts that no-one noticed.
Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, December 10th, 2010 - 8 comments
The sum Phil Heatley has so far spent trying to get three women and their families evicted from their state houses, an effort to look tough, is the equivalent to the cost of building two new state houses. Over half a million spent on an ultimately pointless exercise – one that’s far from finished.
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, November 26th, 2010 - 224 comments
It’s pretty bloody late in his tenure to be saying it, but Police Commissioner Howard Broad has joined with every expert in telling politicians that their braindead, populist policy of increasing the number of crimes and ramping up prison sentences has to stop. It’s not a solution to crime, it’s making it worse.
Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, May 11th, 2010 - 15 comments
The argument against privatising prisons isn’t high principle (only the state should imprison people) or that this is an attempt at cost-cutting. No, the reason private prisons suck is they cost more. The last time Auckland Remand was privatised it didn’t save money. It cost $66,000 a year to imprison someone in Auckland remand vs $49,000 for a publicly-run equivalent.
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, April 24th, 2010 - 56 comments
The Nats are looking to cut $1.8 billion in spending over four years. Where from? What and who will be deemed to be “low quality” in need of “weeding out”? The answers are going to tell us a lot about the National Party’s values…
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, April 15th, 2010 - 22 comments
How economically illiterate do the Nats have to be to send the government’s research vessel Tangaroa to Singapore for a $20 million refit when VT Fitzroy at Devonport was ready and willing to do the work here? Sure the bid was a bit lower but did they consider the tax the government would gain, the fewer unemployed and the other benefits from keeping the work here in New Zealand?
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, April 9th, 2010 - 30 comments
So the govt wants to sue the Waihopai 3 for $1.1 mil. No pesky jury this time. The dudes only have a grand between them. Spending a couple of hundred thousand on lawyers’ fees to bankrupt some hippies. Doesn’t seem like the best use of taxpayer cash. Tell you what. If the govt really wants its $1.1 million they can take it out of our tax ‘cuts’. 25 cents each. That’ll be my tax cut pretty much gone.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, March 25th, 2010 - 6 comments
When pressed very very hard, Rodney Hide described the set up costs of the Government’s Supercity as “minuscule” even though he couldn’t put a number on it. Now, we have some a number on what “minuscule” is in Hide’s book. The Auckland City Council alone faces a $34 million bill to establish the Supercity.
Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, March 17th, 2010 - 14 comments
During Question Time yesterday, Metiria Turei exposed National’s plan to subsidise mineral exploration by foreign companies in the most important parts of our national parks.
John Key refused to confirm Turei’s information but couldn’t deny it. Clearly, the Nats had been planning to slip it through in the Budget unnoticed.
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, February 4th, 2010 - 17 comments
Well, there can’t be any doubt now, Anne Tolley is this government’s worst minister. A failure that stands out among failures. She had an Auckland university pay to take her on a chopper ride because she didn’t understand what was meant by getting a “helicopter view of the sector”. She complained to her advisors about …
Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, January 29th, 2010 - 18 comments
The first half of an excellent piece by Kent Dunston of Save the Basin (which is opposing the construction of flyovers around the Basin Reserve by National): Back in the halcyon days of the Muldoon administration circa 1979 the then-National government embarked on a series of large-scale interventionist construction schemes called ‘Think Big’ that were …
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, January 28th, 2010 - 60 comments
Steven Joyce has announced plans for a motorway from Puhoi to Wellsford at a cost of $2 billion ($1.4 billion in today’s money). The route is used by just 15,000 cars a day (and that has been falling the last few years) and is estimated (optimistically) to save just 15 minutes off the travel time. …
Written By: - Date published: 6:57 am, January 13th, 2010 - 6 comments
At first, I thought I must have been dreaming yesterday morning. There was John Banks loudly attacking central government politicians from Wellington. How dare they impose expensive and unjustified costs on Aucklanders? Why were they so insistent on rushing through their own ideas rather than taking the time to come to an enduring solution that Aucklanders …
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, January 7th, 2010 - 130 comments
Steven Joyce has finally revealed the benefit/cost ratio for the billion dollar Transmission Gully project. A few weeks ago he was mocking Sue Kedgley for saying that the costs would outweigh the benefits and claiming that the BCR would be about 1.5 ($1.50 benefit for each $1 spent). It turns out Joyce was lying. There is just …
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, December 17th, 2009 - 119 comments
Here’s a prediction. Transmission Gully will never be built. There’s a reason that Labour kept pushing Transmission Gully off. The Benefit/Cost ratio is sh*t. “It is likely that the benefit-cost ratio for the Transmission Gully route is less than 1” says Joyce. Disgracefully, NZTA is too ashamed to publish the actual number. Transmission Gully will …
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, December 1st, 2009 - 46 comments
Apart from keeping Don Brash well stocked with corned beef in his dotage, what exactly are we getting out of the Government’s half million dollar 2025 Taskforce? The Brash Report is a joke. It reads like nothing so much as a collective ramblings of half a dozen geriatics who haven’t had a new idea in 20 …
Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, November 8th, 2009 - 17 comments
I’m not against Prime Ministers making limited use of Airforce aircraft when necessary – when commercial flights or (better) surface travel aren’t practical. It’s cheaper and more efficient than having dedicated aircraft that would hardly ever be used. But Key using two Iroquois, each flying for eight hours, just so he could get from Blenheim to Kiakoura …
Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, November 5th, 2008 - 26 comments
One of the virtues of New Zealand government has long been that we avoid US-style pork barrel politics. The Government sets the direction of policy and priorities but doesn’t interfere with specific projects. The principle is that the experts, not the elected officials, should decide the details of specific projects. For instance, the Government might …
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, September 1st, 2008 - 19 comments
Because National has abandoned its wastewatch website, we keep track of the ‘waste’ National has promised to cut to pay for those magical, mysterious, cure-all tax cuts. Here’s what they’ve said they will cut: 1) Embassy in Sweden – approx $3 million capital, $3 million operating (why it’s not waste) 2) Badges about Te Reo …
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, July 13th, 2008 - 54 comments
The idea that a government would purposely spend money in a wasteful manner is patently absurd. Voters want more government services and lower tax, any dollar of wasteful spending not only takes away from a government’s ability to meet those desires but also gives voters an active reason to vote against the Government. That’s a …
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, July 4th, 2008 - 34 comments
The Government’s new core benefit will see all beneficiaries given the same treatment and the same assistance to get into work if they are able. The changes will reduce monthly costs for both beneficiaries and MSD. The more efficient system will save $40 to $70 million a year (source: newsroom). A cheaper system that will …
Written By: - Date published: 4:11 pm, June 25th, 2008 - 12 comments
Whenever John Key is asked to explain how he will fund some new spending or his still secret tax cuts, he says ‘we’ll cut waste/rein in spending’ and the only example he ever gives is ‘we’ll cap the core public service at 36,000′. This, he claims, will save ‘$500 million over 3 years’ or $166 …
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, June 24th, 2008 - 65 comments
In response to the UMR poll that shows 60% of voters would not want tax cuts at the expense of public services, Bill English says “under any tax plans we might have government spending will continue to increase* but [we need] more effective public services in tougher times” Notice, they are already preparing the ground …
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