OU’RE WEEKLY REMINDER OF WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT UNDER THE LAST GOV. ( a few of thousands of examples)
1. Wallaby eradication — $2.7 million to kill 18 wallabies. $153,000 per wallaby and 26,000 labour hours. Cheaper to fly them home business class.
2. Virtual job expos — $835,000. 126 people attended. $6,626 per Zoom attendee.
3. Global health recruitment campaign — $514,000. Result: 3 interviews. $171,000 per interview.
4. Let’s Get Wellington Moving — $35m on consultants. Just $250k on actual construction. You read that right.
5. Auckland Light Rail — $229 million. Six years. Not one metre of track. Burning $1.2m/week on consultants at peak.
6. Three Waters — ~$1.2 billion torched on a policy nobody wanted, scrapped before delivering a single pipe. Included $14,500 to write a job description for a CEO who never existed.
7. iReX ferries — $500m+ sunk. Ballooned from $551m to a projected $3 billion+ before cancellation. (NZ First also had fingerprints on the original deal — worth being upfront about.)
8. RAT tests — $531 million sitting in warehouses. Storage at $100,000/day. Approved over a year late.
9. Mongrel Mob meth rehab — $2.75 million. $239k catering. $157k marae hire. $100k hiring a van.
10. Shorter shower campaign — $2.8 million. Printed in 7 languages. To tell you to take shorter showers.
11. Auckland Harbour cycle/walking bridge — $51 million on planning before scrapped. No bridge.
12. Lake Onslow pumped hydro — ~$100 million on feasibility studies. Not a shovel in the ground.
13. Workforce Development Councils — $65 million/year for bodies critics said delivered little tangible value. Disestablished.
14. RNZ/TVNZ merger — $20 million. Abandoned by Labour themselves.
15. Ethnic women in politics research — $842,000. A university grant could’ve done it for a fraction.
16. “Ulu Cavu Wig Tour” — $73,000 in taxpayer funding for the Arts Minister’s husband’s tour.
17. Abandoned China immigration office — ~$3 million in rent on an office closed for over a year.
18. Promoting Australian citizenship to Kiwis already in Australia — $10,000. Funding the brain drain with our money.
…and we could keep going.
We should never FORGET Labour. Just a small fraction of their wasteful ways.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
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