While Kiwi businesses are facing economic uncertainty, the Ministry supposedly responsible for helping businesses has been spending our money on Workplace Waiata – i.e. staff singing sessions in their Wellington offices. And this isn't just a one-off thing: At their swanky Wellington offices, MBIE were hosting 30 minute sessions every work day, every week!
MBIE employs 5,892 bureaucrats (it's grown from 4,676 in 2020), literally being paid to sing, clap, poi, and recite Māori proverbs and hymns.
MBIE bosses asked the staff to get back to work. But the bureaucrats said "NO".
According to documents we've unearthed, last year, MBIE bosses attempted to reduce these sessions from daily 30-minute sing-alongs across various floors, to "just" 20 minutes, twice a week. According to email correspondence (obtained under the Official Information Act) one of the reasons for the 'cut back' was concerns about the Workplace Waiata causing noise distraction for others in the office.
No kidding!
But here's where it gets even more ridiculous... The precious MBIE staffers weren't having a bar of it! They revolted at management for daring to cut back the entitlement.
We've unearthed internal emails, chats, strategy documents, and even formal negotiations. Staff wrote an eight page submission demanding that the waiata "entitlement" continue. Staff described the sessions as "taonga" (treasure) and insisted they were essential for "wellbeing" and "capability building." They produced lengthy documents arguing why three sessions per week was the "bare minimum".
Their suggestion to the senior leadership? To carry on doing everything they were already doing:
Click to view
The bureaucrats claimed that management's instruction to have the sessions during unpaid breaks was "colonial" and "culturally insensitive".
They said even "relocating to enclosed rooms" (in order to avoid disrupting other staff in the open offices) was "viewed as symbolic marginalisation" and "hiding the kaupapa".
So MBIE's leadership teams were forced to hold crisis meetings.
You read that right. The Ministry responsible for making sure New Zealand’s economy works, from businesses and jobs to housing, immigration, and energy, spent months arguing about singing schedules.
That's howwoke self-entitled these MBIE staff have become.
The compromise reached
The final compromise and solution? Management eventually agreed through a "cultural negotiation" that the 30-minute sing-along sessions would not be abolished.
Instead, they were reduced from five to three 30-minute sessions per week.
Only in the public service could something so ridiculous require this level of executive time, negotiation, and outcome.
This isn't about cultural respect, it's about the priorities of people who are funded by us, the taxpayer. Whether it is religious or cultural, you don't go to work to be paid to sing along. Let me be crystal clear: this isn't a criticism of waiata or Māori culture. This is about a Ministry that has lost sight of its purpose.
Does your employer pay you 30-minutes a day for a sing along or prayer?
If staff want to sing together, that's great – do it at lunchtime or after work. This MBIE workplace waiata shows what's wrong with Wellington, and what we thought this Government was elected to tackle.
Where is the focus on the core business? Instead, taxpayers are shelling out for endless navel-gazing and staff priorities trumping taxpayer value, all while management is unable or unwilling to make basic decisions to ensure value for your money.
Time and time again, we get stories and tips from supporters about waste that goes on within the public service. At this point, we aren't even surprised.........The full article is published HERE
MBIE bosses asked the staff to get back to work. But the bureaucrats said "NO".
According to documents we've unearthed, last year, MBIE bosses attempted to reduce these sessions from daily 30-minute sing-alongs across various floors, to "just" 20 minutes, twice a week. According to email correspondence (obtained under the Official Information Act) one of the reasons for the 'cut back' was concerns about the Workplace Waiata causing noise distraction for others in the office.
No kidding!
But here's where it gets even more ridiculous... The precious MBIE staffers weren't having a bar of it! They revolted at management for daring to cut back the entitlement.
We've unearthed internal emails, chats, strategy documents, and even formal negotiations. Staff wrote an eight page submission demanding that the waiata "entitlement" continue. Staff described the sessions as "taonga" (treasure) and insisted they were essential for "wellbeing" and "capability building." They produced lengthy documents arguing why three sessions per week was the "bare minimum".
Their suggestion to the senior leadership? To carry on doing everything they were already doing:
Click to view
The bureaucrats claimed that management's instruction to have the sessions during unpaid breaks was "colonial" and "culturally insensitive".
They said even "relocating to enclosed rooms" (in order to avoid disrupting other staff in the open offices) was "viewed as symbolic marginalisation" and "hiding the kaupapa".
So MBIE's leadership teams were forced to hold crisis meetings.
You read that right. The Ministry responsible for making sure New Zealand’s economy works, from businesses and jobs to housing, immigration, and energy, spent months arguing about singing schedules.
That's how
The compromise reached
The final compromise and solution? Management eventually agreed through a "cultural negotiation" that the 30-minute sing-along sessions would not be abolished.
Instead, they were reduced from five to three 30-minute sessions per week.
Only in the public service could something so ridiculous require this level of executive time, negotiation, and outcome.
This isn't about cultural respect, it's about the priorities of people who are funded by us, the taxpayer. Whether it is religious or cultural, you don't go to work to be paid to sing along. Let me be crystal clear: this isn't a criticism of waiata or Māori culture. This is about a Ministry that has lost sight of its purpose.
Does your employer pay you 30-minutes a day for a sing along or prayer?
If staff want to sing together, that's great – do it at lunchtime or after work. This MBIE workplace waiata shows what's wrong with Wellington, and what we thought this Government was elected to tackle.
Where is the focus on the core business? Instead, taxpayers are shelling out for endless navel-gazing and staff priorities trumping taxpayer value, all while management is unable or unwilling to make basic decisions to ensure value for your money.
Time and time again, we get stories and tips from supporters about waste that goes on within the public service. At this point, we aren't even surprised.........The full article is published HERE
Rhys Hurley is Investigations Coordinator for the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.
14 comments:
Why not fire those staff and hire good ones? Plenty of people looking for employment these days. Decent salaries there too.
The web says 16 ministers share responsibility for MBIE areas - led by Nicola Willis for economic growth. Too many cooks?
Conformity to such obsertity is the real concern.
Indeed, Anon 857. It is forcing people to partake in a religious rite which is a violation of their human rights.
Well, another good example of what it costs to 'give effect' to Te Tiriti. 30mins × 5days = 150mins pwk or 2.5 hrs pwk / 40hrs pwk = 6.25% of employment time × 5892 employees = 368.25 FTE's, assumIng they all do it and not a minute is wasted before and after each session. And this doesn't account for the other karakia time at meetings, and more especially all those wonks that spend the rest of their working time inserting te reo and/or creating and reviewing 'policy initiatives' that otherwise 'give effect' to the purported requirements of Te Tiriti.
How befitting that this is in MBIE. (We've certainly lost the no.8 wire mentality and initiative of New Zealand.) Welcome to woke, entirely confected and unproductive, 'Aotearoa'!
Plus unlimited time off for part Maori to participate in any culture activity !
Where are the National leaders on this ?
Why no action, no response, just let it roll on - it proves that luxon has abdicated all responsibility for anything other than NZs financial accounting.
The fact that these practices are so seldom leaked is indicative of the maori capture and associated fear of utu which so permeates the Public service and much else. If we had non captured RNZ and TVNZ and reasonably objective newspapers as of old, and all citizens read instead of just a few following only the salacious headlines, and if we still had cartoonists as Tremain and rational commentators like Bob Jones we might stem this absurdity. Hopefully in rejecting the maori 5th columnist aspect of National voters will remain within the Coaliton. Otherwise NZ is truly doomed.
and this is MBIE... Somebody has to pay for this. MBIE of all places should know the current fuel crisis affects earnings from tourism and agriculture/dairy and curtails the ability to run or start businesses, get to and from employment.
If they want to keep spending their time doing things like this you'd think that right now they'd be putting everything they had into finding ways to keep NZ working and increasing productivity.
As a conservative Christian in no way would I participate in these waiata animist rituals/singing especially as I would not necessarily know what I am saying in Te Reo . In my beliefs I could be bringing curses on myself by idolizing other gods or contrary and condemned beliefs like ancestor worship.
The ten commandments are clear, in No one commandment : 'Thou shall have no other gods besides me '.
All this is to explain just why it is against my human rights to be forced to participate in any religious practices , I don't subscribe to with eg utu instead of forgiveness.
Wake up people and don't be fooled. This is not culture but forced religion . Besides, do you really want this country spiralling downwards into a country like Haiti ? Utu could even lead to voodoo dolls .Have you read a translation of the Haka -fairly bloody and glorifying war.
We have all this nonsense because we have allowed continuation of a dysfunctional and now thoroughly corrupt constitutional structure dominated by ‘political parties’ focussed tightly on their own interests; certainly not the interests of the nation as a whole. We cannot vote ourselves out of this fetid swamp of delusion. Spend election day at the beach. Don’t encourage them.
This nonsense is like cancer - it has been allowed to spread and the only cure is to cut it out before it kills the service entirely.
And - the 'good" Captain of the RMNZ Titanic, having shuffled his Officers & responsibility's, still sail forth - "believing that HE & HIS team are rendering (unto Caesar) - the good oil, that will help NZ re-build - with the required -
- failure to ensure that MBIE "stuck to task at
hand - on has to ask, "what do they do, that will assist NZ Business to develop", in light of recent weeks/months - we have seen many businesses across NZ -
- close down, either specific plants or the whole Company
- multi national corporations, who own a NZ Business, close shop, and indicate they "have not finished".
Yup- a great Country - but sadly falling over.
I await to see Frozen Potato Chips (created from derivative NZ spuds, smuggled out of NZ ) made in China, in the freezers at Pak & Save, 4 Square & New World.
Think how much money adopting AI into MBIE could save.
The productivity increase from all those wasted hours would be enormous.
The day will come, and it ain’t far away, when the penny drops and the computer does your job. Be more valuable if you want to keep your job.
It's not just Health NZ & MBIE - there are equivalent activities happening across other ministeries. They are cultural groups that practice during work hours in order to attend & perform at concerts at other ministeries. These practices regularly consume a halfday per week.
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