Taxpayer Update: Labour back in Government in new poll 🚨 | Watts in car crash (interview) 🤦 | Orr's six nights of splendour ✈️
The second Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll for the year is out, and it's not good news for the Government.
SHOCK POLL: Labour, Te Pāti Māori and the Greens would have enough seats to form Government 📊
Under these numbers, Labour, with te Pāti Māori and the Greens would be able to form a Government – that's the first time since March 2022, when the Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll last shows the left ahead.
Although National is up 2.3 points to 31.9 percent from last month, it's not enough to fend off the left block.
Labour is up 0.4 points to 31.3 percent, the Greens are up 3.7 points to 13.2 percent, and Te Pāti Māori are down 0.9 points to 4.4 percent.
Meanwhile, ACT are down 0.8 points to 10.0 percent, New Zealand First are down 1.7 points to 6.4 percent.
That means the centre-right bloc are projected to hold 59 seats, not enough to command a majority in the 120-seat Parliament. Compared to last month, the centre-left bloc has gained three seats, bringing their total to 61 seats.
Head over to our website for the 'top voting issue', preferred Prime Minister, and other data.
Watt went wrong with Paris emissions target? 🫷
As you know, the Taxpayers' Union has always supported sensible climate mitigation policy, and New Zealand's world-beating emissions trading scheme. But Climate Change Minister Simon Watts' decision to sign New Zealand up for even more aggressive climate targets than Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw is economic madness.
How can you credibly say you want to "grow the economy" when you sign up to extreme targets to cut emissions that Treasury estimate could cost taxpayers up to $24 billion – or $12,000 per New Zealand household?
Perhaps the reason this was so misjudged was because Simon Watts was talking to the wrong people (or just the side with a particular viewpoint).
Last week, we exposed the Minister for having refused to meet with the Federated Farmers for more than a year – despite agricultural emissions making up one half of New Zealand's emissions profile. According to publicly available Ministerial diaries, the Minister has instead been meeting with anti-agricultural groups such as Greenpeace!
This is consistent with what we've faced with Minister Watts's office. In fact, Minister Watts is the only Minister in the current Government to have refused to meet with your humble Taxpayers' Union!
Despite being Minister of Revenue (i.e. responsible for the tax system) the Minister wouldn't even talk to New Zealand's largest taxpayer group.
We tried to reach out again last year when the IRD was found to have leaked taxpayer information of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders in a data breach to social media companies. No response.
Then a few weeks back, when Simon Watts was given the Local Government Portfolio. After all, Simeon Brown would bounce ideas off the Taxpayers' Union and, well, ensure he was engaged with ratepayers. But with Watts' office, again, radio silence. In fact, we understand Watts is instead meeting with the lefties Nanaia Mahuta's friends at Local Government New Zealand – the very organisation trying to undermine Simeon Brown's efforts to put a cap on rates!
So, last week, given the climate target announcement, we asked him onto our podcast. I'm not holding my breath.
Simon Watts was quite happy to hitch his cart to our 'Stop Three Waters' roadshow events, but as soon as he got the Ministerial limo, the phone went off the hook. With the Feds also being locked out, it really makes you wonder...
Watt was that?! The Climate Change Minister's train crash interview 💥
As a farmer said to me over the weekend - at least James Shaw was over the detail.
There is still time for Mr Luxon to overrule this wayward Minister: use our email tool to email the Coalition's Party-leaders and ask them to stop this economic self-sabotage and set emissions targets that are actually achievable.
Adrian Orr spends $1k a night on a hotel room and laundry. Time to bring back Don Brash? 🌟
Before entering politics, former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Don Brash established himself as a taxpayer-hero when, in 1999, the Reserve Bank released details of his travel spending. The original press release (recently purged from the RBNZ's eyewateringly expensive website) concluded with:
"Unlike many central bank chiefs, Dr Brash travels without an entourage. On all of his overseas trips and most of his New Zealand ones, he travels entirely without the aid of staff. Furthermore, as a matter of policy he flies economy class within New Zealand and Australia and business class internationally.
"In line with a Bank policy he instigated, he routinely washes his own clothes when travelling to avoid incurring the expense of using laundry services. Dr Brash is always very mindful of his accountability to the New Zealand taxpayer."
How times have changed...
The Taxpayers' Union can reveal that current Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr and a lucky colleague spent $32k on a flash foreign getaway to Washington DC, courtesy of you, the taxpayer.
Or maybe not so lucky. While Mr Orr lived it up at the front of the plane in Business Class, Premium Economy was just fine for the bag carrier.
Now here's the kicker. Both of their rooms cost a few dollars shy of $1,000 a night each!
Reading the receipts, it seems Orr's room stay ended up about $700 more expensive than his workmate's thanks to extra meals, as well as exorbitant laundry services.
Seems like the Governor was about as successful at keeping food off his clothes as he was at keeping the lid on inflation (or his expenses under control).
Adrian Orr's not the only one who's bloated... 🐖🏦
Speaking of appetites, seems like the Reserve Bank's got one to match its head honcho.
What was once a lean, mean inflation-wrecking machine even a few years ago is now the poster child for Wellington bloat. Since 2018, RBNZ has ballooned in size by more than two and a half times.
The Strategy, Governance, and Sustainability team has grown from 29 to 63, and the Transformation, Innovation, People and Culture more than tripled from 11 to 38. And even the Governor's personal retinue has gone from three to five.
The worst bit is RBNZ's got worse at its job. When it sat at around 200 staff it was the envy of the world. At two and a half times that size, the Reserve Bank's failures to properly manage inflation have seen it take all the heat out of the economy. We've suffered a longer per-capita recession than after the Global Financial Crisis and we're currently knee-deep in the middle of the worst economic downturn in more than thirty years.
Too many cooks spoil the broth?
TAXPAYER VICTORY: The stopping the workshop gravy train 🙌
Department of Internal Affairs have been caught wasting almost a million dollars sending bureaucrats to yet more workshops - this time, using "indigenous knowledge" to become "change agents."
92 staff spent 80 hours each prepping for the course, five straight days getting grilled at the marae, and then eight hours of debriefing over the next month.
Running the maths quickly, that's just shy of 12,000 staff hours at an average Public Sector salary of $48.89 an hour. Yeesh
Slap another $375k of course costs on top of those $575,000 staff costs and what do you have? A big waste of time and money.
Every rock we look under, we find more of these workshops raking in hundreds of thousands from the taxpayer. Te Kurahuna, Pakeha Project, Courageous Conversations, sitting lessons, bravery training...
Minutes after we went to the media with this one, we had a call from Minister Brooke van Velden's office. The Minister's office told us that they've now stopped all future training with Te Kurahuna Ltd.
And - get this - the Minister's already managed to save $1,316,000 through her programme scrapping just some of DIA's workshops. Other Ministers, take note. Cheers to a Taxpayer Victory!
Have a good week.
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