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.”

Dear Supporter,

The silly season is well underway. It's the time for Christmas shopping, summer planning, last minute errands, and when Governments tend to 'take out the trash' – hoping bad news stories are buried in the Christmas rush. So while Christmas is right around the corner Santa's naughty list is growing.

This week, we learned of some sneaky (unannounced) tax changes from Wellington, that rates capping has been delayed until 2029, the bureaucrat golden goodbye bonanza continues, and a record high rates hike in the pipeline for Aucklanders.

Oh, and you might have noticed a bit of media attention the last few days on a new campaign we've not even launched yet! Some comments about that below...

So grab a cuppa. This end of week wrap up is stacked.

Rates Cap Now ✅ or Rates Cap Later ❌

On Monday we learned the good news is that the capping of crippling council rates is coming. The bad news is that the Government has pushed back implementation until 2029.

That means that councils now have three full years to make massive rate hikes before the cap kicks in. And does anyone have faith that they won't?

Most councils are currently working on their Long Term Plans – which are required to be done every three years to set out rates and spending parameters for the following 10 years (yes, I know how that reads).

That means the window of opportunity to force councils to live within their means (and what ratepayers can afford) is narrow. The Government’s delay is an invitation for local councils to hike everything now, bake it into the baseline, and shrug later.

Obviously, we had a lot to say on this issue, with Tory on Three News making the case for ratepayers and why we need to Cap Rates *Now*.

James was also busy. His excellent op-ed for The Post also points out that councils will rush to push rates up while they still can, because once the cap arrives, they’re locked in. I just love the last line of this:

Continue reading over on The Post's website.

Yours truly had a longer discussion with current Otago Regional Councillor (and host on The Platform) Michael Laws. 

I also spoke with Duncan Garner for his Editor in Chief podcast.

TVNZ bias: even AI is noticing 📺

Strangely, we didn't hear a whisper from TVNZ's One News, despite your humble Taxpayers' Union both proposing the rates capping policy, and driving the campaign to get the Government to adopt it!

Just like One News strived to ignore ratepayers during the whole two years of coverage of the last Government's Three Waters effort, they'd rather stick to "insiders" like Local Government NZ and others who are using ratepayer money to oppose our Cap Rates Now campaign.

And we are not alone.

New AI analysis of the framing of political stories by One News suggests that something is going seriously awry at the taxpayer-owned broadcaster...

NEW Rates Cap Dashboard: How much have you already been fleeced? 💳🐑

As you know, we track council rates across the country closely. Earlier in the year we exposed that cumulatively, over the last three years, the average rates hike by councils was an incredible 35 percent. 

So on Friday we launched the Rates Cap Dashboard – a new tool revealing what the average household in every council district would have saved if the Government's rates cap had been in place over the past three years.

James and his team found:

• Across the country, the average household would be between $670 and $864 better off right now had the proposed 2-4 percent cap been in place over the last three years.
• The average household in 21 council areas would have saved more than $1,000 each
• Queenstown-Lakes District ratepayers would have saved the most: an incredible $1,706 lost per household.
• Even in councils with the smallest numbers, a rates cap would still have left hundreds of dollars in the pockets of every local ratepayer.

👉 See what your council cost your household in lost savings here

The campaign isn't over: we've got Cabinet over the line on the Cap Rates bit, now we just need them to do it NOW.

To back the Cap Rates Now campaign and chip-in to the fighting fund, click here.

Mayor Brown’s Rates Cap Backflip 💥🛑

Wayne Brown campaigned as the guy who’d rein in Auckland Council waste. But fast forward to today, and Auckland Council’s operating spending continues to balloon right under Mr Brown's nose. 

Despite the rhetoric, Wayne Brown has hiked Council spending by more than 20.5% in just three years. Cumulative inflation over the same timeframe has been seven percent.

During the election campaign just been, Brown committed to keep rates no more than 1.5 percent above inflation – which is bang on the midpoint for where the Government has set its cap! But now, just three months later, Wayne Brown has changed his tune. 

Now the Mayor says a rates cap “won’t work” –  announcing a 7.9 percent rates hike within an hour of the Government announcing its policy.

If Wayne Brown gets his way, next year's rates hike will be the highest ever for the Super City!

Brown is blaming the City Rail Link which he claimed will add $1 million a day to ratepayers’ costs. But our friends at the Auckland Ratepayers' Alliance checked the numbers: the actual cost is $26 million a year, or roughly equivalent to 1 percent on rates.

Not nothing, but nowhere near the eight percent figure Wayne Brown is pushing.

Brown isn’t levelling with Aucklanders — and that’s exactly why we need a legally enforceable cap.

With my Ratepayers' Alliance hat on I joined Newstalk ZB to call out Mayor Brown's 'absolute nonsense' 👇

IRD's sneaky pre-Christmas surprise 🎄⚠️

While no one was paying attention, the IRD quietly dropped one of the most destructive tax changes we’ve seen in decades.

Here’s the gist:

• Many small businesses pay owners through a running loan account during the year.
• At year-end, they clear it with dividends or salary — standard practice.
• Under the new rule, if the loan isn’t cleared within 12 months, IRD will now treat the whole loan as taxable income…
• …and the owner still has to repay the loan later using more taxable income.

Yes, taxed twice. Yes, retrospective, covering the current tax year (in fact, IRD say the law will be backdated to come into effect as of Thursday). And no, there was no press conference, no speech, no debate. Just a quiet upload to the IRD website.

Our tax experts say that these changes will have a far greater impact on New Zealand's SMEs and farmers than Labour's proposed Capital Gains Tax. No wonder the Government is mum!

And nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a backdated tax bill.

Sneaking a policy of this magnitude through without fanfare over summer is bad form. You can read our full comments here.

Submissions close on 5 February (more info here) – rest assured that the Taxpayers' Union will be back to work well before then! 

Golden Handshakes: More than $837,000 in a single week (and that's just those we know about!) 🤦‍♀️💰

If you thought we’d hit peak golden handshake insanity with Adrian Orr's $416,120 "golden goodbye", think again. This week alone, we already know taxpayers are on the hook for:

• Andrew Coster (disgraced former head of the Social Investment Agency who was allowed to resign and therefore collect a garden leave/three-month's pay windfall) – $130,000
• Diana Sarfati (former head of the Ministry of Health)– $350,000
• Sarah Fitt (former Pharmac boss) – $357,000

Tory spoke to Newstalk ZB on Andrew Coster's golden handshake and the scale of his payout, which you can listen to here.

We’ve also seen another resignation as the Coster fallout continues to reverberate through Wellington.

This time a former Deputy Police Commissioner now at the Civil Aviation Authority, was rewarded with a payout – and one that the CAA chief refused to even declare when asked by MPs during Parliament's scrutiny week.

That’s a) a middle finger to transparency and b) likely to push the total north of $1 million this week alone.

This is why we’re pushing for a hard cap on exit payouts, zero payouts for anyone paid more than an MP, and full transparency in public servants receiving such payouts.

Until then, the golden handshake conveyor belt rolls on.

Labour using taxpayer funded staff to make Party propaganda 📹🚫

At Labour’s conference, their social media adviser — funded by Parliamentary Service — was producing political content on the taxpayer dollar.

The rules are clear: Parliamentary staff support MPs’ official duties, not partisan content creation for the party machine.

I don’t think it’s complicated. If parties want political videos, they should use party funds, not raid the taxpayer wallet.

And yes, this all happened during Scrutiny Week. You couldn’t write it better.

Health NZ spending $3.5 million this year on “non-jobs” 🧘‍♂️🌀

The year might be nearly over, but everyone’s favourite Investigations Coordinator Rhys is still hard at work digging into waste across local and national government.

On Friday, Rhys revealed Health NZ employs 13.7 FTE staff dedicated exclusively to DEI, sustainability, climate, and non-clinical “culture” work.

The total salary bill is a jaw-dropping $3,475,054.

Back of the envelope, that's an average salary of $253,654! 

As is usual, Rhys has linked to all the source material on the website, so you can judge for yourself whether these Health NZ salaries are justified...

As you can see, while Health NZ only give us the salary information in bands, we can work out from the total that most of the roles are paid at the very upper end!

Meanwhile:

• Emergency departments are overflowing
• Waitlists are blowing out
• Surgical backlogs are growing

This is the problem in a nutshell: We’re funding everything except actual healthcare.

One more thing... 

Finally, we’ve had a lot of good publicity for our campaign launching very soon, and now it is our turn to say what it is all about.

The campaign is about Nicola Willis becoming our best ever finance minister. No one wants her to succeed more than than Taxpayers’ Union to cut wasteful spending, balance the books, and keep out a Labour-TPM-Green high tax, high deficit, 'addicted to spending' disaster.

Our pressure campaign is about pointing out the fiscal elephants in the room and her having the incentives from voters to become our best ever finance minister and get New Zealand off the disastrous fiscal track it has been on for so long.

Watch this space...

Jordan Williams Executive Director New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.

Ps. As well as the last Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll of 2025, it's looking likely the Government's replacement to the Resource Management Act is going to be released early next week. This is likely to be the biggest (regulatory) tax relief any government has delivered under MMP. As soon as we have worked through the details, we'll get them to you. A big week ahead!

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