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Hi Friend,
Happy
Wednesday. Today we've got the numbers from the last Taxpayers’
Union-Curia Poll of the year, the $218,000 of dodgy misspending
by school principals, and the ridiculous amount of money the Reserve
Bank are spending shuttling staff between offices.
We’ve also got a few extra thoughts on the new
Planning and Natural Environment Bills, plus a warning before next
week’s pre-Christmas opening of the books. Let’s go.
NEW POLL: Government holds the lead, but
Labour remain the largest party
📊
The Coalition would return to Government,
but Labour would become the largest party in Parliament if an election
were held tomorrow according to the last Taxpayers’ Union-Curia
Poll of 2025.
Neither bloc will be entering election year
feeling comfortable with these results.
Labour drops 1.7 points to 31.6 percent, while
National drops 0.2 points to 30.0 percent.
The Greens gain 1.6 points to 10.8 percent, ACT
gains 0.3 points to 8.9 percent, New Zealand First drops 1.0 point to
8.1 percent, while Te Pāti Māori drops 0.2 points to 3.1
percent.
Despite dropping one seat, Labour would be the
largest party in parliament on 41 seats, while National remains on 39.
The Greens gain two seats to 14, while NZ First drops one to 11. ACT
remains on 11 seats, while Te Pāti Māori drops two to four.
On this poll, the combined projected seats for
the Centre-Right is down one seat to 61 seats, while the combined
seats for Centre-Left is down one seat to 59. So the Centre-Right
bloc could still form a Government but barely.
So let's look at how voters are feeling about the
leaders.
Luxon’s net favourability drops 3 points to -13
percent, while Chris Hipkins drops 5 points to -7 percent.
In the major voting issues, cost of living has
jumped 4.1 points to 32.6 percent, more than double the next closest
issue (the economy).
For more information on the poll and details
about the methodology, head
over to our website.
The one power councils should lose before
a rates cap 🧢
Friend,
this week the credit ratings agency S&P
warned that council finances will be squeezed and the books will
be harder to balance following the introduction of the Government’s
planned rates cap.
Well, yeah – that’s kind of the point. A rates
cap will force councils to prioritise spending and even make some
tough decisions. They might even have to focus on the basics, or, in
the Prime Minister’s words, “stop doing dumb stuff”.
Councils should be spending less of their own
volition but, given that they won’t, a rates cap will force them to do
it.
And if councils need help deciphering
between the basics and the ‘dumb stuff’, our suggestion is to return
the law to what it was prior to 2002: take away what's called 'the
power of general competence'.
What's that? The power of general competence
essentially means local councils can do pretty much anything a person
can do, as long as it’s not against the law.
Prior to 2002 councils could only do things if a
law specifically said councils were empowered to. By
definition, removing the power of general competence would legally
limited councils to 'core services' and not, say, giving
$128,352 to a Māori circus school (classic Auckland
Council...).
At our Cap Rates Now protest in
Christchurch back in July, Deputy PM David Seymour spoke out against
general competence and why – even beyond rates caps – scrapping it
would be his top priority for getting council spending under
control. Watch
the full interview between David and Jordan on our YouTube
here.
So if councils are looking for inspiration, going
back to pre-general competence duties would be our recommended place
to start.
To
read more on how general competence affects council spending, take a
moment to read our report Building Better
Councils.
Teachers slammed for misuse of $250,000
of ‘wellbeing support’ funding 🏝️
The Auditor-General’s office came out swinging on
Monday with the release of the 2024
school audits, revealing a shocking $248,812 of taxpayers’ money
spent on ‘professional coaching and wellbeing support’ that they
wanted to draw attention to.
That is $250k spent by schools - mainly
on travel - in ways the Auditor-General can’t condone or
approve.
Highlights include:
Cannington School (Cave, Canterbury): The
school spent $5,000 in wellbeing funds on the principal and spouse’s
overseas trip without a clear business purpose or receipts to justify
it. It also failed to seek the required Ministry approval and breached
the law by not keeping proper accounting records.
Te Kura
Kaupapa Maori o Te Tonga o Hokianga (Opononi, Northland): The
school spent $6,000 in wellbeing funds on the principal’s personal
trip to Turkey, despite no clear business purpose and in breach of its
own travel policy. It also failed to seek required Ministry approval
for this benefit and later donated a van at a $29,994 loss.
St
Mary’s School (Palmerston North, Manawatū-Whanganui): The
school spent $11,198 of wellbeing funds on the principal’s travel to
Rome, with stopovers in Singapore and Thailand, without any clear
business purpose. It also failed to seek the required Ministry
approval for this additional benefit.
And here's something you might not have noticed.
Remember the school/principal who went after David Seymour over the
mouldy school lunches last week? Her school is the same one that was
pulled up for spending $18,500 on a senior leadership trip to
Queenstown.
That school spent
$10,000 on accommodation and $6,000 on meals, drinks, and tourist
activities. Given the moral outrage over lunches, you'd think
they'd bother to make sure that money meant for educating kids would
be, well, used to educate kids...
The Auditor-General concluded that there
was no clear case for the spend having business purposes. Maybe if the
management spent less time in Queenstown and more time at the school,
those lunches wouldn't have been left to go
mouldy?
The list makes for incredible reading: just
for yourself here.
Reserve Bank spending $850,000 in a year
on Wellington/Auckland air-bridge ✈️
Most government agencies have tightened their
travel spending, but the Reserve Bank seems to have gone the other
way, running what looks more like a frequent-flyer programme than a
central bank.
Rhys Hurley, our Investigations Coordinator, has
been back at it again. He's revealed that the Reserve Bank are
shelling out $850,000 to shuttle staff up from Wellington to fill
their $65
million (mostly empty) swanky waterfront offices in
Auckland.
Our
OIA revealed that 45 members of staff travelled between Wellington and
Auckland at least ten times last year, including contractors.
That’s at least 450 times a meeting could have been on Zoom at
zero cost to the taxpayers…
The Bank is now under new leadership. Time will
tell...
Brace yourself for next week,
Friend 💨
Next week
is the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) – the
pre-Christmas 'opening of the books'.
It's the
last chance for the Government to course-correct before we go into
election year - but for anyone thinking the Government is
going to pull a rabbit out of the hat, it's not looking
likely.
The only
polite way I can describe Finance Minister Nicola Willis' pre-HYEFU
interview on Newstalk ZB drive time on Monday night was as a train
crash (especially from about 5 minutes in).
I'm not
one to condone vulgar language, but it was hard to disagree with the
listener's feedback text (which was readout on air) describing the
Minister's answers as 'slippery as a turd in spring rain'. 👀
Two years
ago, Nicola Willis literally
invented a new operating
balance accounting measure (which Treasury never supported)
to exclude ACC liabilities so that she could say she'll 'get the books
back to surplus'.
When Nicola Willis became Minister of
Finance, the surplus was 4 years away. In May's Budget, it was still 4
years away. Next week, it’s likely to be 5 years
away…
You can listen to
the interview here.
Who funds
the Taxpayers' Union?! 😡
You know a
politician lacks arguments when they have to resort to the tired line
of "who funds you?" to try and rebuff questions from
Taxpayers' Union.
So for the
benefit of the Minister of Finance (and the leader of the Labour
Party) – who's
taken objection to our asking why she's spending more than
Grant Robertson despite promising to spend less – let me be clear:
our funding is from people who receive this email.
Of our
200,000 email subscribers, 28,754 have donated.
Even if it
sometimes annoys some of our friends in Parliament, our very job is to
draw attention to the fiscal elephants in the room, including when it
doesn't suit the Government's narrative. Right now, the rate
of spending, borrowing, and even the structural deficit is worse than
it was two years ago.
So to each
and everyone of our financial supporters – we say thank you for making
our work for Lower Taxes, Less Waste, and More Accountability
possible. ❤️
Enjoy the
rest of your day.
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Tory
Relf
Head of Comms
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union
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PS. Our new campaign has been the talk of the town, but
what's coming probably isn't what you expect. Keep an eye on your
inbox tomorrow morning for a very sweet treat. 😉
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