Porky presents troughing award to CEO of Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs
Introducing Porky, our new mascot and aspiring list MP!
Porky loves identifying troughing MPs and bureaucrats. The crème de la crème, he surprises with an awards ceremony. After all, when you’ve turned troughing on the taxpayer into an art, it would be rude to get no recognition!
This morning Porky issues his first award having read the Dominion Post's coverage of Pauline Winter, the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and her $30,000 expense bill , including weekend trips for her and an assistant to fly to Auckland most weekends.
Taxpayers are stumping up for Pacific Island Affairs boss Pauline Winter to travel between Wellington and Auckland most weekends.
Winter has a home in Westmere, but her $240,000-a-year job is based in the capital.
Her expense records show that over the last year she flew between the two cities almost every weekend. Between July 2013 and 2014, her expenditure totalled more than $30,000, most of which went on airfares, taxis and rental car hire in Wellington and Auckland.
Taxpayers fork out $270,000 per year for this Chief Executive and she is refusing to take calls from the media. The Taxpayers' Union called on Ms Winter to front up, or resign.
This afternoon Porky visited the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, hoping to present Ms Winter with a “Troughing Award” to acknowledge her endeavours with taxpayers’ money.
Unfortunately Ms Winter's didn’t front. Porky was devastated. Executive Director Jordan Williams recounts:
"For Ms Winter's gallant efforts to rip off New Zealand taxpayers with publicly funded weekend trips to the exotic capital of the South Pacific known as Auckland, Porky and I visited the Ministry’s offices to present her with the first of our 'Troughing Awards’."
“Ms Winters was in the office but refused to front-up or speak to media."
"Despite Ms Winter's expenses being more than $30,000 she chose to hide in her office and send a spin doctor to accept the award on her behalf."
“Ms Winter's refusal to justify her expense bill is the epitome of arrogance. She should front up, justify her extravagance on the taxpayer purse, or resign.”
Porky’s quest will continue - in fact you can expect to see him out and about where ever wasteful bureaucrats, politicians and taxpayer funded groups are wasting hard earned tax dollars.