NRT: Rewarding failure

• notices and features
• 11 years ago
• Categories: business, Economy, Steven Joyce, welfare
• Tags: corporate welfare, novopay

What seems to be the defining feature of this government is in providing corporate welfare to incompetents who underbid their competition for government work or want bigger subsidies at the taxpayers expense. Give them the vaguest excuse and Key or Joyce will wilt like a flower in a desert and throw money at companies who don’t need it. No Right Turn examines another one

Last year Novopay royally fucked up the education payroll, leaving some teachers unpaid for months. So naturally National is giving them more money

The Government is pushing an extra $6 million into ensuring there are no new glitches with the Novopay system when the calender year ticks over to 2014.

Minister for Novopay Steven Joyce said the transition between years was always tricky.

[…]

“To ensure a much better result this year, ministers have agreed to put in an additional $5 million towards fixing outstanding technical issues plus $1 million for comprehensive end of year/start of year system training for Novopay support staff and school payroll administrators.

So basicly we’re paying them again to do stuff they should have got right the first time. This, apparently, is the “discipline of the free market”.

Bullshit. Its rewarding failure. If you or I fucked up that badly, people wouldn’t be there with another briefcase of cash. We’d be fired. And the same should happen to Novopay. Either they do the job they’re paid to do, to the standards we expect, or we get someone else to do it. It’s that simple.