Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 10/8/23

$40,000 party splurge at the Ministry for Pacific Peoples is well publicised – but what do we pay to support pidgin?

Ele Ludemann rises a good question on her blog today in an article headed No respect for other people’s money.

She has been riled by Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes’s criticism of extravagant spending on a farewell and welcome at a government agency.

Brian Easton: The GDP Fetish

We have it around the wrong way. The issue is not what the arts contribute to market output. It is what market output contributes to the arts – and a lot more besides.

According to its Minister, Carmel Sepuloni, the arts, culture and heritage sector ‘contributed $12.9 billion to our economy’s GDP’ in the year to March 2022. I await a similar release from the Minister for Corrections. A calculation for the justice sector using the same method would find that crime made a similar contribution. (Nobody seems to have done the calculation.) Is that something to celebrate?