The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that the Ministry of Social Development approved 155,103 rental bond grants worth $236,121,897 since 2023, but cannot report the total debt repaid.

MSD refused to provide repayment and write-off data, saying it would require substantial manual collation from individual client files.

Taxpayers’ Union Investigative Lead, Rhys Hurley, said:

“WINZ has handed out nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in recoverable bond assistance, paid for by taxpayers, yet doesn't have a system of tracking whether taxpayers got it back."

"Just like the $38,512,555.69 in business start up funding, the Ministry for Social Development only holds this information in individual client files.

"These grants are not meant to be free money. Agencies handing out taxpayer funds should be tracking whether it actually comes back. That's Accounting 101."

“Minister Louise Upston needs to ask how many millions in benefit schemes are handed out without proper central tracking and require this information to be proactively published from now on.”

The Taxpayers’ Union will join striking MBIE workers by picketing outside the Ministry’s head office today, highlighting how its botched $35 million immigration project cost the equivalent of a $6,000 pay rise for every MBIE employee.

Porky the Waste Hater, the Taxpayers’ Union’s mascot, will join the picket line and call for accountability over the failed project and allegations that senior officials misled the Minister.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Tyler Groenewald said:

“MBIE workers are asking for bigger pay rises, but their bosses have just blown the equivalent of $6,000 for every staff member on one failed project."

“We are joining the picket line in solidarity by demanding that MBIE’s leadership explain where the money went and why no one has been held accountable."

“Taxpayers should not be asked to pay more while senior officials can waste millions and allegedly mislead ministers without consequence.”

The organisation behind the failed $29 million MethaneSAT mission should not be allowed to review its own performance, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson, Ella Dickson, says:

“When $29 million of taxpayer funding is literally lost in space, taxpayers deserve a genuinely independent investigation. The Environmental Defense Fund cannot credibly review its own failure.”

“Reports that serious technical concerns were not communicated before launch raise questions about what officials knew, what due diligence was carried out, and why taxpayers were exposed to such a high-risk project.”

“The Auditor-General, Grant Taylor, must establish what went wrong, whether the risks were properly disclosed, and who is accountable for this loss.”

The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that the Ministry of Education run Healthy School Lunches programme has 37 full-time Ministry staff, despite lunch delivery being largely outsourced to external providers.

Documents released under the Official Information Act show an assortment of bureaucrats spent more than $129,754.90 on staff travel in one year, including $10,265.26 on three trips to the Chatham Islands and $17,676.95 on travel for the General Manager between Rotorua and Wellington.

Taxpayers' Union spokesman Austin Ellingham-Banks said:

"The Ministry outsourced the lunches but kept the bureaucracy."

"A private consortium makes and delivers the food, but we've revealed that 37 staff, including 22 advisors, 9 managers, and six figures in travel sit on top of it."

"For all that overhead, the Auditor-General found the Ministry 'did not have sufficiently robust mechanisms to measure, manage, and monitor' the programme. What on earth are they all doing?"

A new report showing government agencies spend more than $180 million a year responding to Official Information Act (OIA) requests highlights the cost of failing to proactively release information.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson, Tyler Groenewald, said:

"The cheapest OIA request is the one that never needs to be made because the information is already available to the public."

"This $180 million bill is the cost of a lack of transparency. Much of the information being requested is clearly able to be made public, yet taxpayers are funding a costly bureaucratic process to release information that often ends up being disclosed anyway."

"Agencies should be proactively publishing reports, data, and other frequently requested information online. Countries such as the UK, United States, Ukraine and Brazil already publish spending and procurement data online, allowing taxpayers to scrutinise government spending without lodging information requests."

"An 'armchair audit' approach, where routine spending data is proactively published through a central transparency portal, would reduce OIA costs, strengthen accountability, and improve public trust."

Councillors Duped Into Thinking $7.7 Million Website Was an App
 
The Taxpayers’ Union is slamming Christchurch City Council after The Press revealed the Council’s MyChristchurch “digital platform” has cost ratepayers $7.7 million, despite councillors initially being led to believe they were funding an app.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Josh Van Veen said:

“Christchurch ratepayers have forked out $7.7 million and ended up with a website. If elected representatives did not know what they were approving, ratepayers deserve to know why.”

“The Council can dress it up as a ‘digital platform’, but that does not explain how this project has cost the equivalent of 1,962 households' worth of rates. At a time when rates are soaring, every dollar blown on bloated IT projects is a dollar not going to core services.”

“This fiasco shows exactly why local government reform is needed. Elected councillors are meant to be in charge, but too often management controls the information and leaves them playing catch-up.”

“Council officials need to come clean on where the money went, why councillors were left in the dark about what was being delivered, and how a website ended up costing ratepayers millions.”

“Ratepayers need a system that gives councillors the power to properly scrutinise spending and stop bureaucrats pulling the wool over the eyes of the people elected to hold them accountable.”

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that New Plymouth District Council will spend $4.37 million demolishing Metro Plaza and a further $2.53 million on “daylighting” the Huatoki Stream, as part of the 2021 Ngāmotu New Plymouth City Centre Strategy.

Rhys Hurley, Taxpayers Union Investigative Lead said:

“RNZ reported the Metro Plaza demolition at just $1.1 million, only a quarter of the actual cost. When the public-facing figure is that far off, it points to a serious transparency failure."

"Ratepayers shouldn’t have to dig through long-term plan workshops or file information requests just to find out what they’re paying for.”

“This is a classic example of a ‘nice-to-have,’ spending millions to turn the stream into a city focal point after the last council hit the New Plymouth District with a 37.73 percent rates hike."

“It seems the council's bureaucrats were prioritising pet projects like renaming parks, removing cars from the city centre, and co-governance arrangements in this strategy ahead of front-footing this information to the people paying the bills.”

The Taxpayers’ Union is questioning why taxpayers are funding security at privately-owned airports, as it reveals that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) employs 1,855 staff (excluding casuals, contractors, board members and staff on leave), making it larger than the United Kingdom’s 1,602 employees, which handles around ten times as many passengers.

This is because New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is responsible not only for aviation regulation, but also for running passenger and baggage screening. Making it larger than the United Kingdom’s regulator, despite ten times as many passengers travelling through British airports.

Taxpayers’ Union Investigations Coordinator, Rhys Hurley, said:

“Taxpayers in New Zealand, a country less than one-tenth the size of the UK, are paying for an aviation regulator much larger than the UK’s, because it is doing jobs the UK regulator simply doesn’t do.”

“Once you strip out the security workforce, the actual regulatory function is smaller. Which raises the question of why we are running airport security through a government agency in the first place?”

“The United Kingdom’s airports handle ten times more passengers, yet their regulator focuses on oversight while airports themselves run screening.”

“When some of our airports privately owned, taxpayers are entitled to ask why they are paying to run airport security at all, and the Civil Aviation Authority focusing only on regulation and enforcement.”

The United Kingdoms Civil Aviation Authority annual report can be found here

The Official Information Act request showing that the Aviation Security Service employs 1,349 staff excluding casuals, contractors, board members and staff on leave can be found here

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal through an Official Information Act request that Inland Revenue spent $1.967 million on an outbound phone call campaign to encourage taxpayers to adopt two-factor authentication for their myIR accounts.

Taxpayers’ Union Investigations Coordinator, Rhys Hurley, said:

“Too often government departments splash out on marketing campaigns while forgetting it’s taxpayers’ money they’re spending.”

“Inland Revenue is right to strengthen its data security, but spending nearly $2 million on phone calls and staff time raises serious questions for those footing the bill.”

“Even staff questioned whether the campaign was a success, with many recipients dismissing the calls as potential scams. When fraud-prevention calls are mistaken for fraud, something has clearly gone wrong.”

“With two-factor authentication now compulsory anyway, wouldn’t a simple pop-up on IRD’s website and a direct email to users have achieved the same outcome at a fraction of the cost?”

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is backing Federated Farmers’ alarm over draft resource management legislation that could open the door to effectively enabling a tax on water by stealth.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson Tory Relf says:

“This is exactly the kind of slippery, backdoor taxing power taxpayers have every right to be worried about. If the Government wants to fix planning laws, it should do so transparently, not sneak in the ability to tax water through future Ministerial decree.”

“Freshwater is already heavily regulated. Giving Ministers sweeping powers to auction rights or impose levies is not reform, it’s a blank cheque for future Governments to treat water as a cash cow.”

“Make no mistake: a water tax doesn’t just hit farmers. It flows straight through to higher food prices, higher costs for exporters, and higher bills for every New Zealander.”

“The whole point of replacing the Resource Management Act was to cut bureaucracy and restore property rights. Provisions like those allowing freshwater being auctioned, tendered, or levied undermine that promise and will only create more uncertainty, more compliance costs, and more distrust.”

“The Government must urgently clarify its intentions and scrap any clauses that allow freshwater rights to be effectively taxed. Kiwis were promised reform, not a new stealth tax.”