Taxpayer Update: More Taxpayer-Funded Parties 💸🎈 | Three Waters Victory 💦💦 | Wellington Water boss quits 👋 | EV Charging Rort 🔌

August 12, 2024 Connor Molloy

This week we farewell the CEO of Wellington Water, reveal the latest extravagant taxpayer-funded party(s), expose the Ministry of Education's wayward priorities, and share our exclusive intel collected from the National Party's conference... We will also give you an update on the Government's unwinding of Labour's Three Waters policy.

Film Commission partying away taxpayer money 💸🎈

Film Commission Parties

After the Ministry for Pacific Peoples got a hounding for spending $40,000 on a leaving party for its outgoing CEO last year, the Film Commission decided to jump on the gravy train too.

Spending more than $16,000 on four separate parties, the situation is so strange even the screenwriters receiving millions of taxpayer dollars from the Commission each year couldn't make it up.

Not content with just one leaving party, the outgoing CEO Mladen Ivancic decided he needed two – one in Auckland and one in Wellington, the latter of which was of course hosted by long-time friend of the Taxpayers' Union and corporate welfare recipient, Peter Jackson.

And of the "special guests", more than 80 percent weren't even Ivancic's colleagues. Plus, once they were over their taxpayer-funded hangover, they got two more welcome parties for the incoming CEO too!

In true Wellywood fashion, the incoming CEO, Annie Murray, signed off on the leaving parties while Ivancic signed off on the welcome ones on his way out! "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine!"

Jordan spoke to Newstalk ZB about how out of touch the Film Commission really is.

This comes following a near $500,000 golden goodbye for the previous CEO after just nine months on the job, four months of which were paid leave. That's a whole other story...

But it's not all bad news this week.

Government adopts key aspects of Taxpayers' Union Three Waters alternative 💦💦💦

Ray Pull Quote

On Thursday, the Government released the latest update in its Three Waters reforms and it's good news, Friend.

The relentless advocacy, campaigning, policy work and legal drafting is finally paying off.

The Three Waters replacement will include many of they key principles and proposals of our alternative we spent the last two years developing.

Our Economist, Ray Deacon, wrote about the latest updates in an opinion piece for Wellington's The Post published on Friday:

Decades of poor asset management, combined with the tendency of councils to raid money intended for things people can’t see, like pipes, to fund the politically expedient things people can see like convention centres and town halls, have led to the situation we find ourselves in today...

Yesterday’s announcement from the Government is a lifeline for New Zealand’s water infrastructure. It incorporates many of the proposals from the Taxpayers’ Union’s technical advisory group.

I was part of that group. Joined by a team of experienced experts in infrastructure, local government, and economics, we set out to develop comprehensive legislative drafting instructions for a future Government to pick up.

Continue reading over at The Post.

Key points from Thursday's announcement:

Councils, jointly or individually, are able to set up council-controlled organisations (CCOs) with ring-fenced revenue for water infrastructure (so it can't be used to hide stealth rates increases to fund pet projects as some councils currently do).
CCOs can borrow for long-term investment in core infrastructure with that cost more fairly shared across all users over the infrastructure's lifetime, rather than lumped on the ratepayers of today – or worse, using borrowed money for day-to-day wasteful spending (or not undertaking the capital work at all).
Drinking water safety and quality will continue to be regulated by the new water regulator, addressing the core issue that caused the Havelock North water crisis back in 2016.
Small shared domestic water schemes will be exempted from the regulations preventing them from being required to deal with the same level of expensive red tape as our largest cities. This is a huge win. Under the current rules, farmers connecting just two dwellings (such as a farmhouse and shearers quarters) were to be regulated like a town-supply utility!
The regulator must consider the costs imposed on suppliers before imposing ineffective or impractical regulation where the cost far exceeds the benefits, preventing engineers from being totally risk adverse or gold-plating (no matter the costs).
Economic regulation, enforced by the Commerce Commission, will require CCOs to publicly produce economic, service performance, and management data, ensuring they are properly managing their assets and future investment. This is standard around the world and is already in place for electricity lines companies.

As Ray summed it up:

Our solutions to the nation’s water woes focused on tackling the core issues rather than using the reforms as a Trojan horse for pushing ideological changes – namely, expanding co-governance and centralising control, as the previous Government did.

Friend, all of this work was made possible thanks to the thousands of our supporters who backed the Taxpayers' Union against all odds to first stop, and then scrap, Three Waters.

We were up against what, at face-value, was an unwinnable battle: A single party majority Labour Government, a media unwilling to report fairly on Three Waters, an opposition unwilling to be vocal and a multi-million dollar taxpayer-funded propaganda campaign to scare the public into supporting their proposals.

But with people power, grassroots activism, roadshows, TV and newspaper ads and hundreds upon hundreds of banners we slowly turned the tide and won convincingly. Take a bow Friend.

Wellington Water boss quits 👋

WW Boss

The same day as the Government's Three Water's announcement, Wellington Water's Chief Executive, Tonia Haskell announced her resignation – effective the very next day.

Credit where it's due for Ms Haskell for falling on her sword following the organisation's incredibly poor (and expensive) performance.

Wellington Water recently admitted overlooking a budget error, forcing ratepayers to fork out an additional $51 million to plug the holes.

Earlier in the year, a damning report highlighted the skyrocketing costs of fixing the city's leaks, and over the summer ratepayers were forced onto water restrictions as the region was losing almost half of its drinking water to leaks.

A serious shakeup is needed at Wellington Water. The Board must work quickly to find a strong replacement who is able to bang the right heads together and get things done.

A similar approach would be useful in central government too...

Time to pull the plug on taxpayer-funded EV chargers 🔌

Last week, Rhys, one of our young researchers, uncovered that the Ministry of Education is pumping millions of dollars into taxpayer-funded EV chargers for their staff. Since 2022, they have spent almost $2.2 million on 297 chargers, only four of which are on properties owned by the taxpayer. For the avoidance of doubt, this isn't car chargers at schools, it's mostly chargers at offices and carparks that aren't even owned by the Ministry.

There’s not even any environmental benefit either. As I explain here, these policies don’t make a dent in emissions.

If government departments were wasting taxpayers’ money installing petrol pumps in their basements it would rightly be called ridiculous. Paying millions to install EV charging points is no different, except it comes with a hefty sprinkle of middle-class welfare for Wellington bureaucrats plugging in their Teslas.

This $2.2 million is just one Ministry’s contribution. Other departments are almost certainly at it too, on top of the tens of millions already splurged on public EV chargers by EECA.

The Ministry needs to use every cent to fix our broken education system. It’s time to pull the plug on this nonsense.

>>> Pull the plug on taxpayer-funded EV chargers <<<

So while it's open-season when it's taxpayer money, when politicians are spending their own money the story is slightly different...

Frosty reception at the National Party conference 🥶

Frosty reception

Earlier this month, the National Party had their annual conference in Auckland.

We're always keen to keep our ears close to the ground, and picked up a scoop or two – but when one of our staffers in attendance reported one little thing he overheard, we couldn’t help but laugh.

Conference-goers had a frosty reception when the National Party apparently refused to put the heating on, saying it would cost the party too much money!

This from the same people running a government spending programme which is spending even more than Grant Robertson was!

So now we know, politicians can indeed be frugal – at least when it’s their money they’re having to spend, not that taken from hardworking taxpayers…

Now take that approach to Wellington please.

Taxpayer Talk – MPs in Depth with National MP for Napier, Katie Nimon🎙️🎧

So while the National Party get-togethers may be frosty, that doesn't mean their MPs are. This week on Taxpayer Talk, I sat down with National's Katie Nimon – a rising star and local MP from my home patch in Napier.

Katie was elected as the MP for the Napier electorate at the 2023 General Election, winning back the seat that had been held by Labour's Stuart Nash since 2014.

Katie's maiden speech stood out to the Taxpayers' Union staff as she was one of the very few MPs to mention an economist, in her case Adam Smith.

Born and raised in Hawke's Bay, Katie has had experience working in, and eventually running, the iconic family bus company Nimon and Son before becoming the transport manager at the regional council.

A passionate advocate for her region, Katie shares her story before politics, what drives her and why she wanted to become an MP.

Listen to the episode on our website | Apple Podcasts, | Spotify | iHeart Radio

Enjoy the week ahead.