Dear Friend,

Louis is on leave this week, but as you'll see the team in Wellington is still knocking out wins for the taxpayer!

Taxpayers’ Union expose the Quit Group greed – hoarding millions of taxpayer funds 💸

On Monday we went public with information we obtained about taxpayer funded anti-smoking charity, the Quit Group, who are hoarding $2.8 million in taxpayer funds, despite no longer providing services to the Government, and refusing to hand over the money to anti-smoking initiatives the funding was meant for.

Instead the ‘charity’, which has been dormant for five years, has been sitting on the money and paying themselves handsomely – $72,000 to board members per year split between the four of them.

To make things worse, the Chair of Quit Group is none other than Chris Cunningham (pictured), who was recently investigated by Charities Services for running up $128,000 in travel and entertainment expenses as Chair of the Hepatitis Foundation. So much for serving the community…

Radio New Zealand went large on the story: Quit Group charity still paying board members five years after shutting down.

📣 Forcing the Prime Minister to respond…

The coverage led to questions being posed to the Prime Minister at her Post-Cabinet Press Conference. Yesterday, Prime Minister Ardern was publicly backing the Taxpayers’ Union, saying the charity should give the money back and shut down if it does not plan to fulfil its social obligation.

Even those in the tobacco control sector climbed in to back us, with the episode being described as a 'shocking waste' by ASH.

…and the Group to do the right thing 😇

This morning the Quit Group finally fronted, putting forward their Deputy Chair (perhaps no one could find Professor Cunningham?).

In what turned into a car crash interview, the Deputy Chair refused to say how much she has been paid, but finally the Group committed to putting the money where it belongs. Take a listen here: Quit Group deputy chair on cash reserves.

This is why we do what we do. For five years officials at the Ministry of Health hadn't been able to force the Quit Group to pay the money back. But within 72 hours of your humble Taxpayers' Union publicly exposing the group's actions this rort has been defeated.

Green Party hypocrisy 🔥🛫

Speaking of shining the light where those in power don't like it, last week Parliament released the latest round of MP’s travel spending. It didn’t take long for us to figure it out: while the Greens call for a ‘climate emergency’ apparently flying on the taxpayer dollar is just fine.

You see, the Green MPs are on average the highest spenders on airfares.

After pointing this out, Heather du Plessis-Allan picked up the matter (see Jet-setting Greens' credibility is up in the air). Youth station bFM put questions directly to James Shaw on the hypocrisy – his excuses were as abundant as the air miles (even calling those who pointed out the figures ‘right-wing trolls’). Take a listen here.

Napier Mayor gives a golden handshake to booted Chief Executive, refuses to confirm the amount 🤝

The Napier City Council has ignored the more than 500 locals who added their name to our petition against the Council giving disgraced Napier City Council CEO Wayne Jack, a golden handshake.

Last week the Council announced his ‘resignation’ and that Mr Jack is off to Australia to takeover as CEO of another Council. But what the Mayor didn’t mention, and what the Taxpayers' Union can confirm, is that far from being a ‘resignation’ the Council paid big bucks for the departure and is trying to keep the deal under wraps.

We say it’s not a resignation when you’re using ratepayer money to pay for it. Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise was being cute with the truth in her attempts to keep this deal out of the media. While we’ve confirmed the deal, the Council refuses to tell us how much the payment is. We hear it was more than half a million, which, in the circumstances of landing straight into another job is totally unjustified.

We’ll keep digging.

Radio NZ publish fake news misleading ads 📰 

It’s bad enough Radio NZ are using taxpayer money to advertise its fully taxpayer-funded content against commercial competitors, but we were shocked to see the following ad running on social media.

The idea that we don’t pay for Radio NZ is ridiculous. Unlike other media organisations, all New Zealanders are forced to pay for RNZ via taxes.  If you don’t you go to jail.

In addition to being misleading, Radio NZ's advertising is an underarm bowl to those private media organisations, many of which are kneecapped by the subsides for RNZ. The fact these taxpayer-funded ads were placed on the very platforms (Facebook and Instagram) blamed for killing off traditional local media, just adds salt to the wound.

Radio NZ love to label those who say things inconsistent with their world views as ‘fake’ or ‘misleading’, so we await the decision of the Advertising Standards Authority who we’ve forwarded this advertisement onto.

Thanks for your support.

Jordan Williams Executive Director New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union