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Taxpayer Update: Golden handshake for incompetence 👋🤑 | NZQ-Ay? Yet another rebrand 💸🤬 | NEW POLL: Government gains, Labour drops 📊💥

It's been a recess week at Parliament this week, but even with some of the top political leaders out of the country, the scourge of government waste persists ...

At the same time, good news for the Government (and Mr Luxon) in this month's exclusiveTaxpayers' Union – Curia Poll (see below).

NZQ-Ay?! Yet another expensive rebrand we've uncovered 💸🤬 

NZQA

Given the dire state of New Zealand's education system, you'd think department heads would be steadfastly focused on ensuring that kids are actually at school and learning.

But why improve education when you can just do a rebrand?

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (the agency tasked with ensuring young people are getting quality teaching, accurate educational records, and internationally transferable qualifications) has instead decided to blow $2.9 million on a flashy rebrand and a website upgrade.

Exposed by your humble Taxpayers' Union, this rebrand involves a new logo, and a change to the colours of the agency's website. Impressive stuff.

Of course, it is sometimes necessary to make technical upgrades to ensure websites function properly but too often government departments seize the 'opportunity' to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars ‘refreshing brand identity’ (whatever that means). We say this nonsense has to stop and there is an easy solution: having one standardised logo for government agencies as they do in the UK:

UK examples

$365k golden goodbye for gross incompetence and failed CEO 👋🏻🤑

The $365,000 payout to outgoing Kāinga Ora (the Government's Homes and Communities agency) Chief Executive, Andrew McKenzie, is nothing short of a reward for failure.

Rather than being able to sack McKenzie – as would be justified in just about any other country – the Board of Kāinga Ora had to both pretend that Mr McKenzie 'resigned' and pay him a $365k golden goodbye. The news comes after a damning report earlier this year about mismanagement by the agency.

Calling it a 'resignation' is about as credible as an email from a Nigerian prince. But it shows the real issue here: under New Zealand employment law, it's extremely difficult to sack even those who are clearly failingWhile some may argue we need laws to protect vulnerable workers, making it nigh on impossible to get rid of lousy CEOs on $700,000+ means many boards and businesses are stuck with duds unless they get out the chequebook. An ACT MP has a proposed solution applicable for smallbusinesses, but as this example shows, it's also big organisations paying dearly to get rid of people who clearly aren't performing.

We sent our friendly mascot Porky-the-Waste-Hater down the road to Kāinga Ora head offices to present Mr McKenzie with this great 'gift' from taxpayers. 

Porky at Kāinga Ora

But wait, there's more... 🤦🏻‍♂️

Sadly – for taxpayers anyway – this wasn't the only big taxpayer payout in the news. In fact, it wasn't even the biggest. Not to be outdone, our friends (I use that term rather loosely) over at the Film Commission paid their Chief Executive out more than half a million!

NZ Herald

In her great investigative piece in Wednesday's NZ Herald, Kate MacNamara explains that David Strong was forced to go on a paid leave of absence when a television programme, The Pilgrim, in which he had an ongoing personal interest came up for funding. This clearly presented a conflict of interest as the Commission distributes funds to such projects. An independent review of his conflict-of-interest disclosures found that:

"The board and David Strong both had opportunities to better handle the disclosure and management of his conflicts of interest. Inadequately documented decisions and discussions, gaps in the implementation of these decisions, breakdowns in communication and information flows, and blurred accountabilities were significant contributing factors to the events that unfolded."

Despite this 'strong' criticism, Strong not only received $100,000 in pay while he was on leave but also a $438,700 payout in compensation when he left the job permanently. Our policy guru, James, has slated this decision, saying that "bureaucrats already earning more than ministers shouldn't be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars more not to do their jobs."

You can read Kate's full piece with James's comments over on the NZ Herald website.

Policy Victory: Local democracy defended! 🗳️💪🏻

Back in 2022, we raised the alarm about about Nanaia Mahuta's 'Review into the Future for Local Government' – a follow-on from Three Waters and another Labour pet-project that looked to radically change the way our local councils operated and de-couple them from local democratic accountability.

You might remember that we set up a submission tool to make it easy for New Zealanders to have their say on the draft recommendations and more than 14,000 of you made your views known, accounting for the vast majority of responses. Sadly, the hand-picked panel ignored these and ploughed ahead anyway. 

The final recommendations included things like lowering the voting age to 16, enabling unelected 'Te Tiriti-based appointments' to councils, changing the voting system without a referendum, introducing so-called citizens' assemblies (erm, what does that make councils then?), and much more. 

Well, there's some good news. The Local Government Minister, Simeon Brown, has put the review on the policy bonfire, labelling the proposals "ideologically-driven". He has even instructed officials to down tools so we won't waste money preparing a formal response to the report. Result!

Christchurch spends $800,000 on... graffiti 🎨🖌️

Christchurch 'Art'

Speaking of councils, our Local Government Campaigns Manager, Sam, was quick to call out Christchurch City Council’s last-minute allocation of $800,000 for so-called street art initiatives from a capital endowment fund meant for things like water pipes and improving roads. This comes after Christchurch agreed to an almost 10 percent rates hike, which is about $320 extra a year for the average Christchurch household.

Families up and down the country are tightening their belts, and we think councils should not be exempt from practising restraint. Now more than ever is the time to shelve nice-to-have art projects and prioritise responsible spending decisions to fund core council services and keep rates as low as possible.

No more taxpayer cash for KiwiSaaS 💵🛑

Grant Robertson loved chucking money at whatever corporate special interest group had the shiniest lobbyists, and so far it’s a habit the new Government has found difficult to kick.

KiwiSaas

But Judith Collins has bucked the trend. After a media campaign led by your humble Taxpayers’ Union, the Minister has decided not to renew $11.2 million in handouts to KiwiSaaS, a tech sector lobbying group.

Now, compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars of your cash that are given out in corporate welfare, this is small fry, but it’s a step in the right direction.

So we just wanted to take this opportunity to say bravo, Judith Collins. It’s a great start, now it’s time to tell the rest of the crony capitalist industry (I'm looking at you, video game subsidies!) to take a hike.

NEW POLL: Gains for National and NZ First while Labour drops 📊💥

There's an improvement in the Government's numbers in this month's hot-off-the-press Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll. Here are the headline results:

Decided Party Vote over time

Compared with last month's poll, National is up 2.2 points on to 37.6% while Labour drops 3.5 points to 25.9%. 

The Greens are relatively static on 12.5% (-0.2 points) while ACT drops marginally to 9.1% (-0.6 points). 

New Zealand First is up 1.7 points to 7.3% while Te Pāti Māori is down 0.5 points to 3.5%. 

For the minor parties, TOP is on 2.4% (+1.6 points), Outdoors & Freedom is on 1.0% (-0.3 points), and the combined total for all other parties is 0.8%.

Here is how these results would translate to seats in Parliament:

Seats

National is up three seats on last month to 47 while Labour is down three seats to 33. The Greens are unchanged on 16 while ACT is down one on last month to 11 seats. New Zealand First is up two seats on last month to nine while Te Pāti Māori is unchanged on six.

The combined projected seats for the Centre-Right of 67 is up four on last month. The combined seats for the Centre-Left is down three to 55. On these numbers, National and ACT would require the support of NZ First to form a government.

This calculation assumes that all electorate seats are held. A Parliament on these figures would have an overhang of two seats and a total of 122 seats.

More detailed results, including preferred Prime Minister scores and government approval ratings, and how to get access to our full polling reports (including geographic breakdowns) are available on our website.

Taxpayer Talk – MPs in Depth with Dr Carlos Cheung 🎙️🎧

Taxpayer Talk: Carlos Cheung

This week on Taxpayer Talk, Connor sat down with National Party MP Dr Carlos Cheung.

Carlos caused one of the greatest upsets at the 2023 Election when he unseated Michael Wood, winning the Mount Roskill seat off the Labour Party for the first time since it was created.

Carlos was born in Hong Kong and moved to New Zealand as a teenager to attend boarding school at Auckland Grammar. He shares his early life experiences, challenges in adapting to a new culture, and his career shift from academia to property management. He has a PHD in biological science and did his thesis on diabetes-induced cardiovascular disease. He reflects on his motivation for entering politics, emphasising community service and the desire to create impactful policy changes.

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

Have a great weekend.

Yours aye,

Callum

Callum Signature

Callum Purves
Head of Campaigns
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union

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Media Mentions:

NewstalkZB Morning Edition: 02 July 2024 – Kāinga Ora Golden Goodbye (01:58)

The Platform James Ross on Waka Kotahi's $5.2M App Failure & Selling the Interislander

NewstalkZB Barry Soper: ZB senior political correspondent on the Government advancing an amended version of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill (03:49)

RNZ The Panel with Peter Field and Niki Bezzant (Part 2) – Sam on $800k for Christchurch Graffiti (09:07)

Indian Weekender NZ Business Confidence Hits The Skids

The Post Crossings and traffic lights may stall commuter bus benefits

The Post Is rebooted fast-track a law written by the Government’s cronies?

Bassett, Brash & Hide JORDAN WILLIAMS: Luxon wants to curry favour with mainstream media

The Press Council turns to private sector for EV charging infrastructure

Greymouth Star Whatever! – Darleen Tana [print only]

Chris Lynch Media Green Party faces pressure to release investigation report on Darleen Tana

NZ Herald Former NZ Film Commission boss David Strong paid over half a million dollars’ leave and severance for nine months’ work

The Huddle The Huddle: Do we believe NZ First's theory about the Aratere grounding?

NZ Herald New poll shows Kiwis divided over whether to sell Cook Strait Interislander service

NewstalkZB Paul Goldsmith: Justice Minister talks new Ministerial Advisory Group for victims of retail crime – Interislander Poll (03:19)


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  • Callum Purves
    published this page in News 2024-07-12 10:01:41 +1200

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