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Hi Friend,
Debbie
Ngarewa-Packer's on tour – but are you paying? 🛫🏝️
Remember Te
Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's surfing
trip to Hawaii (coincidentally at the same time as she recorded
$39,000 in taxpayer-funded international flights)?
Last week,
Ms Ngarewa-Packer was spotted in the Cook Islands protesting the Cook
Island's new deal with China. Apparently, there's not a protest she
doesn't want to attend she's there to celebrate her 30th
wedding anniversary – despite it being a Parliamentary sitting
week.
Naturally,
we've had a few questions from supporters asking whether taxpayers
footed the bill for the wedding holiday.
And I'd
like to tell you either way Friend, but I can't. You see, unlike
spending and travel by Ministers, non-ministerial Members of
Parliament have a special carve-out from freedom of information laws.
Parliamentary Services refuse to disclose anything other than the
total amounts being spent - this
is all the summary information we can get. No itemisation, no
receipts, no reporting. Zilch.
Signing
their own permission slip? 🤑
In fact,
the only control on MPs since
the rules were loosened even further 18 months ago, is that MPs
have to ask their Party Leader to take trips overseas on the taxpayer.
Prior to that, permission could only be granted by the
Speaker.
Without
public transparency, the only control of this spending is the Speaker,
Gerry Brownlee. Jordan
has written to the Speaker asking him to confirm that taxpayers' money
was not used to fund a Cook Islands wedding-anniversary
holiday.
But, the
law is not on our side. The Speaker doesn't even have to reply! And
whenever we've asked Te Pāti Māori to answer questions, we've hit a
brick wall. It's almost as if they don't think they're accountable to
taxpayers...
Friend,
MPs spending is a secretive black hole. Only political pressure will
see questions being asked, and ultimately transparency and
accountability.
We've
made it easy for you to email the Speaker to demand transparency.
Click here to send an email to the Speaker, Gerry
Brownlee.
Please
will you take 30 seconds to help this effort and demand
transparency?
KiwiBuild’s $77m black
hole 🏚️🌪️
KiwiBuild
is back in the spotlight – and once again - it’s taxpayers left with
the tab. 109 unsold homes have hit the market after Kāinga Ora was
forced to buy them off private developers who couldn't shift them
themselves.
This was
always the risk with the last Government's dumb housing policies.
Under Kiwibuild, developers got the upside reward, while taxpayers
carried the risk. As a result, houses were commissioned in places they
were never going to sell. Nuts.
What planet is the Public Service Association
living on? 🥴
We were
very happy last week to see our Atlas Network operative taxpayer hero, Public
Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche calling out bureaucrats
for getting pay rises automatically.
Rewarding time-served rather than merit has seen costs bloat 72% since
2018, with the average
bureaucrat’s paycheque now more than $101,000.
But
performance pay has always been a hill to die on for the public sector
unions like the Public Service Association ("PSA") which depend on
gliding-on public service 'lifers' to fill the Labour Party's union
coffers.
It's bad
enough that public sector unions argue that "high performance" means a
"bad culture" but this new argument they've come up with takes the
cake.
Is
performance pay racist? Or
sexist? 😳
According to the Public Service Association's
Fleur Fitzsimons – a former (you can probably guess) Labour Party
candidate – performance pay is [checks notes]
RACIST!
Apparently, Māori and women can't do well with
performance pay. In Wellington's worldview, they're just not high
performers. 🤷
Yes,
incredibly, that's really their argument:
As well as
believing in the radical idea that public servants should be
paid on, well, their performance, here at the Taxpayers'
Union we also believe in calling out racism where we see
it...
We are
disgusted that such stereotypes are being used to suggest
performance-based pay rises will see women, Māori, and Pasifika people
miss out and
have called it out.
We are baffled that in 2025 anyone would suggest that sex or
race would make people less capable. Either Fleur Fitzsimons is a bad
egg, or there is something deeply wrong with the culture at the
PSA.
$4m woke workshops on the hospital
wards 🏥👨⚕️
The irony
about the PSA, and so many other important wokesters in Wellington, is
that they're fast to scream racist if, say, you want your doctors’
professional development to be focussed on things that save lives, not
things like "indigenous knowledge and healing practices".
Health
NZ (Te Whatu Ora) has wasted $4m on Te Kurahuna workshops to turn
health workers into 'change-agents' promoting indigenous
knowledge and healing practices.
Our
investigation reveals 11,000
staff (at anyone’s guess how much in lost productivity) are being sent
to woke workshops rather than working.
Te Kurahuna
might be a familiar name, as only a few weeks ago we flagged that DIA
have wasted close to a million dollars sending staff to the same
programmes.
Minister
Brooke van Velden’s canned that spending, and we say it’s time for new
Health Minister Simeon Brown to do the same in Health.
How deep do
these workshops go? It’s the grift that keeps of giving.
$5 million
in YOUR pocket or on a gold-plated park? Swings and
roundabouts 🛝🚸
Tauranga
ratepayers have just been slapped with a $5 million bill for a new
kid's playground.
Our
investigation shows exactly what we all already know – you can't trust
the council to build anything without costing an arm and a leg,
even a few swings (and maybe a flying fox if you're
lucky).
The
breakdown shows $640,000 was spent on consulting and management.
Consulting. For a playground. 👀
$150,000 on
Council staff costs. $361,000 on safety surfacing.
And more
than $1.1 million was spent on landscaping and concrete (before the
safety surfacing was added)
And what
paid for that platinum playzone? Tauranga residents' 13.1% rates hike
just this year alone.
If only
Mayor Mahé Drysdale was nearby... 👀
Enjoy the
rest of your week.
 |
James
Ross
Policy & Public Affairs Manager
New Zealand
Taxpayers’ Union
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