Taxpayer Update: Russ wins Lotto 💸 | Hipkins opens the door 🚪 | Ruth takes on KiwiSaver 💥
Hi,
We have bad news if you fell for claims the Government is shrinking Wellington's bureaucracy; good news on our Cap Rates Now campaign, plus this month's Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll and Peter Williams sits down with the Deputy PM David Seymour for Taxpayer Talk.
But first – hitting the Jackpot at the Ministry of Justice: half-a-million-dollar garden leave courtesy of the taxpayer...
Winning the Taxpayer-Funded Lotto 🤡🥀
Last week we learned former Lotto presenter Russell Harrison had really hit the jackpot.
Having worked for the Ministry of Justice (a liaison role in the Family Court) for only a couple of weeks, he was suspended and put on full paid leave due to being charged as part of a major international FBI organised crime bust.
He was then left untouched.
For five years.
On full pay.
Until finally pleading guilty to smuggling gold bars to Turkey.
And Justice officials kept it secret... 🤫
Five years of a lavish taxpayer-funded salary is one thing, but, to our astonishment, the Secretary for Justice Andrew Kibblewhite did not think to tell the Minister.
And, thanks to the ratchet clauses in public service contracts, it appears Harrison even got pay rises while on gardening "crim" leave!
Holding 'em to account 🪧
Here at the Taxpayers' Union, we believe in public sector accountability.
So, rather than let the bosses of the Ministry of Justice shirk away and get away with refusing to front to the media, we took the media down to the Ministry of Justice.
With our hastily constructed "Ministry of Justice Winning Wheel", we invited Ministry staff to 'take a spin' as they headed in and out for their lunch break...
While the wheels of justice might turn slowly, not so the Ministry's Winning Wheel...
Making the serious point: no private sector employer would tolerate five years of paid garden leave for an employee who hadn't even worked for a month 🙅♂️
Our Executive Director, Jordan, used the stunt to hammer it home: "There is no justice for taxpayers at the Ministry of Justice!"
The Secretary for Justice (the Ministry's CEO) refused to front. Despite a cushy $649,000 salary, Andrew Kibblewhite left it to a faceless 'spokesperson' to defend the spending.
Their excuse? Innocent until proven guilty...
Of course, that is true for criminal law, but not civil or employment. Once it became clear Russell Harrison couldn't do the job (on a balance of probabilities standard) any reasonable employer would have stopped the pay cheques.
Instead Andrew Kibblewhite ignored the issue - and hid it from Ministers.
Here's how One News covered our stunt as the lead on the 6 o'clock bulletin. 👇
Oh, and here's the even bigger joke: Based on the mid-point of Russell Harrison's salary band we calculated old mate "Russ" was paid more taxpayer money on gardening leave than the value of the literal gold bars he smuggled for the Comancheros!
🎶 There was a reason we picked this song for our stunt... 🎶
EXCLUSIVE: Health New Zealand was also paying Russell Harrison to 'influence' 🤦♂️
In just the last hour, one of our young researchers has exposed that the Ministry of Justice wasn't the only department paying Russell Harrison.
Clearly Russ isn't the type of crim to sit on his hands.
The Taxpayers' Union can reveal that Health NZ has also been funnelling money to Harrison while he was on garden leave charged with smuggling.
As part of a Health NZ promotion campaign, ol' mate Russ was paid to be a community ambassador or 'influencer' to promote childhood immunisation.
It's fair to say Health NZ are being cagey... They're forcing us to use the Official Information Act, rather than have their media team just answer our basic questions. Other than confirm that it is indeed Russell Harrison, we don't know yet the precise payment amounts.
So more to come on this...
37 bureaucrats walk into a lunch programme... 🥪
From one taxpayer-funded absurdity to another.
Imagine outsourcing a job, then hiring a small herd of bureaucrats to travel around New Zealand supervising the people you have already paid to do it.
That is exactly what is happening with the Ministry of Education’s Healthy School Lunches programme.
Now, of course some oversight is needed. No one is suggesting lunch providers should be left to fling sandwiches into the void and hope for the best.
But the Taxpayers' Union has uncovered that the Education Ministry employs 37 full-time staff to oversee the school lunch programme.
Not cook, not to tender contracts, but to "oversee" the third-party lunch providers.
It includes 22 advisors, nine managers, and a healthy serving of taxpayer-funded travel.
Official Information Act documents reveal those staff spent $129,754.90 on travel in just one year.
That includes:
- $10,265.26 for three trips to the Chatham Islands
- $17,676.95 flying the General Manager between Rotorua (where he lives) and Wellington (where he works).
And after all that bureaucracy, the Auditor-General found the Ministry still “did not have sufficiently robust mechanisms to measure, manage, and monitor” the programme’s performance.
Is this the same Government that was paying people to rate restaurants around the country?
We say, too much 'nom nom' on the taxpayer, not enough prudence with our money.
So much for “slashing” the public sector bureaucracy 🐌
And it is not just school lunches where the bureaucracy seems to be doing just fine.
We have heard plenty from the Opposition media about the supposedly brutal public sector job cuts, to the extent you would think Wellington was being hollowed out.
Except the latest Stats NZ figures tell a very different story.
According to the latest filled jobs data, total jobs rose by 7,678 in May, with service industries doing most of the heavy lifting.
And as Politik pointed out last week, Infometrics says the public sector — government, healthcare, and education — is still providing the “backbone of job growth”.
Hold on.
"The public sector driving job growth?"
That will come as a surprise to anyone who believed the Greens’ routine claims that the evil National-led Government has been secretly taking a chainsaw to the bureaucracy.
If only... 🤤
(just kidding)
In fact, job gains are continuing in "public administration, healthcare, and education". Infometrics even noted that gains in public administration may be coming at the expense of private sector professional and administrative services as government agencies bring more work in-house.
In other words, the state is not exactly withering away.
The Government has talked a big game about getting the public service back under control, including reducing the size of the bureaucracy to around one percent of the population.
Good. But these figures are a useful reminder that announcements are not the same as delivery.
Is Labour about to back rates capping? 🤞
Speaking of pressure finally being applied in the right places...
This matters because Labour MP Damien O’Connor has written to Local Government Minister Simon Watts asking him to intervene over Waitaki District Council’s proposed 17 percent rates hike.
Until now, Labour had ruled out supporting rates caps.
But last night, Hipkins left the door open.
Hipkins said Labour had not yet “formed a final view” and suggested the party had not seen the details of the Government’s proposal. When Heather followed up, he repeated that Labour had not made a final call.
That is a big shift.
After years of councils hiking rates two to three times faster than inflation, rates capping is not just “good retail politics”, as Hipkins put it. It is bloody good policy.
Getting Labour over the line to support capping council rates 🙌
I know Jordan emailed you last night, but if you've not already, please add your voice and email Chris Hipkins asking him to get on board and back our campaign to Cap Rates Now.
>>> Email Chris Hipkins <<<
NEW POLL: Labour’s lowest vote share since October 2025 as country direction lifts 📊
And the political pressure is showing up in the numbers too.
In the weeks following the Greens’ proposals for new wealth and inheritance taxes launched with an $800 million mistake, and Labour’s recent contributions to their nearly $9,000-per-household funding gap, both parties have taken a hit this month's Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll.
While still the largest party, Labour has hit its lowest vote share since October last year. And with voters feeling markedly better about the country’s direction this month (based on the new "right/wrong direction"), the Coalition would still be able to form a Government on these results.
Labour is down 0.7 points to 31.5 percent, while National is up 0.4 points to 30.5 percent. The Greens are down 1.1 points to 10.4 percent, while New Zealand First is down 0.6 points to 10.8 percent.
ACT is down 0.9 points to 6.9 percent, while Te Pāti Māori is up 0.3 points to 3.4 percent.
For the minor parties, TOP is on 3.3 percent (+0.1 points), NZ Outdoors and Freedom is on 0.8 percent (+0.5 points), and New Conservatives are on 0.4 percent (+0.2 points).
Converting these results into seats in Parliament Labour gains 1 seat to 41 compared to last month, while National also gains 1 to 39.
New Zealand First is unchanged on 14, the Greens are down 1 seat to 13, while ACT is down 1 seat to 9. Te Pāti Māori also remains unchanged on 4.
The combined projected seats for the Government parties bloc is unchanged from last month on 62 seats.
The combined seats for the Opposition parties bloc is unchanged on 58 seats.
So on these numbers, the current three parties of Government would be able to form a Government.
A promising sign for the government? Or just optimism for the (short-lived) Iran ceasefire? 🤔
Every month our pollsters ask whether New Zealand is headed in the "right direction" or the "wrong direction". The two results are then netted out (right minus wrong).
Interestingly, the net country direction result in this month's poll is negative 6.3 percent (+12.5 points), the highest figure since November 2025.
39.2 percent (+5.5 points) say the country is heading in the right direction, while 45.5 percent (-7.0 points) say the country is heading in the wrong direction.
You can see the full breakdown over on our website.
Is KiwiSaver reform charging workers twice? Ruth and Simon say 'yes' 💸
The Taxpayers’ Union believes that you are much better with your own money than the Government is.
And while reasonable minds can differ on the merits of National's proposal to make KiwiSaver compulsory, economically the proposal would work like a 12 percent 'payroll tax'.
Therefore, if introduced, there is a strong argument that the Government should compensate workers with an equal sized tax relief package. That would make it more like a tax 'swap' than a painful tax 'take'.
Taxpayers' Union Chair (and former Minister of Finance) Ruth Richardson, opined in the Sunday Star Times (requires sub). The core of the issue?
“New Zealanders do not need saving from themselves. They need saving from a state that refuses to live within its means.”
– Ruth Richardson
We've republished Ruth's piece on our website here.
And former National Party leader Simon Bridges writing in the NZ Herald made similar points this week:
"Twelve per cent might make for a stronger collective future. However, it would also make things much tougher for a heap of Kiwis until they retire – employees as well as for SME owners, a much-neglected collection of businesspeople, who’ve survived – just – a torrid few years, but still aren’t finding it easy. If it’s a choice for them between paying off bills, keeping their businesses going, handling their mortgage repayments, or 12% more into KiwiSaver, I reckon I know what the majority would choose."
– Simon Bridges
The Simon Bridges piece is here (requires sub).
Taxpayer Talk: David Seymour gets stuck in 🎙️
And on that note, this week’s Taxpayer Talk digs into KiwiSaver too.
Peter Williams sat down with ACT Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, David Seymour.
They got into everything from regulation and KiwiSaver to Treaty politics, coalition dynamics, and how ACT is tracking in Government - plus whether Seymour thinks the party can grow its vote at the next election.
The Deputy PM also had a few choice words for National’s new KiwiSaver policy, warning that compulsory savings do not magically appear from nowhere. Someone pays, and it is usually workers, mortgage holders, or small business owners.
It is a good, wide-ranging pre-election interview, and well worth a listen.
You can watch Peter’s full interview with David Seymour on Taxpayer Talk here.
Enjoy the long weekend,
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