* Tupperwaka: $200K per day
* Specialist environmental response vessel: Dunno, didn’t bother buying it.
* Leaving scene of shipwreck/oil disaster to open fake boat made from oil products: valueless
Just me or is he developing a severe list? Could be in danger of breaking up.
National promised to get tough ‘undeserving’ state house tenants. (always someone to get tough on when maintaining the privileges of the elite) The first targets were 3 women and their kids, judged guilty by association with their partners who were charged with burglary (the charges were dropped). 2 years and $1m wasted and the government has given up.
During his disastrous campaign trip to Kapiti yesterday, John Key said the Kapiti Expressway would be paid for by asset sales. Labour will do neither. National won’t release the Expressway’s benefit-cost ratio but it will cost $500m ($30K per metre). To get it, we would have to sell half of Solid Energy, which has paid us $310m of dividends in the past 5 years.
The government has put out a new policy statement on transport. Total funding is unchanged. But cost of the RoNS is rising before they’re even built. So, it’s more money into white elephant highways. Less money for road safety, local roads, road policing, and public transport. Stupid myopic policy.
After intense criticism for using government-owned helicopters for personal trips, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has reimbursed the state for the cost of the flights. I look forward to John Key following Christie’s lead and repaying us for his flights to watch the V8s in Hamilton.
It took National some weeks to get together a line on their multitudinous spending scandals. When they did, it was rather predictable: ‘Labour’s focused on the small things’. Pretty rich coming from corgi-boy Key. No defence of the actual excesses either. But, naturally, the Herald editorial has swallowed and regurgitated the line.
Patrick Gower has more on the helicopter flight that John Key took in 2009 after opening a walkway that Key says was necessary because of mystery meetings that were supposedly arranged that afternoon. The flight cost us $2,000 when Key learned the helicopter was owned by the Velas.
“We see you on TV a lot. What else do you do?” – schoolkid to John Key at yet another photo-op.
In other news, Key was lying when he said he doesn’t have any choice over his DPS entourage. Helen Clark dismissed her DPS cover for at least 73 days when on private holidays. Key spent $30K of our money taking the DPS to Hawaii.
The out of touchness, she burns! In a few short replies, the Nats said so much this week. The stories of perk abuse have been rolling out almost too fast, in fact. Each needs following up, each minister needs to be hounded, but there are so many targets. The galling thing is in a fortnight the Nats will tell us ‘everyone has to tighten their belts’.
Cameron Slater has the inside word on Murray McCully’s $75,000 trip to Vanuatu on a New Zealand Air Force plane that involved flying the 126-seater there and back to drop him and seven staff off, then there and back again the next day to pick them up. This story gets worse the more details come out.
The government has spent $1 million so far on 350 campervans for Christchurch. One person stayed in them. For that money, better to put them up at Premier House and commute them by Iroquois. There is a massive housing need in Christchurch but the campervans were so shitty and expensive people preferred overcrowded or damaged houses.
Key’s helicopter rides. Huge waste of money for what? A V8 photo-op then a golf club dinner. Why are we paying this guy $7750 a week to do nothing but photo ops? Where’s the recovery package for the West Coast? Where’s the Chch plan? Where’ the brighter future? Sorry, PM’s been too busy playing race cars and eating fancy dinners.
The government’s books are tight. We shouldn’t borrow more, so there need to be reversals of the tax cuts and spending cuts. What matters is what is cut – all cuts are not the same. I’d like to see the $110 billion dollars of subsidies for greenhouse polluters under National’s Emissions Trading Scheme cut.
This Herald story about spin doctor Brad Tattersfield was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Ministerial offices of the Prime Minister, Judith Collins, Paula Bennett, and the Chief Executive of the Department of Labour to “minimise scandal” is one example of the sort of back-room spending of public money I’d like to see cut.
National pollster David Farrar reckons that its sweet for the elite to spend $100 a head on meals at the taxpayer’s expense. Same time as he’s sneering at a woman struggling to get by feeding four people on $200 a week. This is National’s New Zealand. The best for the elite. Cat food for the rest.
The Crown BMWs are back in the news. One will have a $1000 underseat heater to keep a worthy’s arse toasty. Based in Dunedin. For “long-distance and long-duration movements”. Hmm. Who flies to Dunedin for a 3 hour drive to Dipton occasionally? Guess you need that heater against the Southern cold when you’re used to balmy Karori.
Shivering in your earthquake-damaged home, wondering how you’ll come up with $190 a week for a campervan after your emergency benefit ends? Living on cat food because GST and price hikes put real food out of reach? Don’t worry, Pita Sharples to the rescue: he’s gifting 1.9 million taxpayer dollars to a hapu in his electorate to build an inflatable, plastic waka.
Key and English are trying to soften us up for big public service cuts this budget. They tell us it’ll just be ‘nice to haves’ and that the private sector will step in to fill the gap when they cut too close to the bone. The important thing to realise is that every time the public service doesn’t provide us with something either we have to buy it out of our own pockets (usually at greater cost) or we don’t get it at all.
The limo issue reveals everything wrong with the Key government in microcosm: greedy, elitist, hypocritical, liars. Against the background of the failing economy, it’s one hell of a bad look. But in monetary terms, it pales in to comparison beside their decision to cancel Cullen Fund contributions, which has now cost $334 million.
Key says he didn’t know about the BMW purchase. Funny cause on Tuesday, English was taking responsibility: “we could go out and buy second-hand cars but one way or another cars need to be maintained”. The Nats try to blame Labour but the contract Labour signed says replacing the cars was optional without penalty.
Crushless Collins’ double-bunking money saver costing $2.6m.
Shock! Paying someone else to build and operate our schools won’t save money.
Nat-appointed public service chiefs paid to air-commute. Pay cuts for frontline.
Key smiles at launch of new science ministry, waves in $3m of science funding cuts.
Two years ago we had one of the best government balance sheets in the world. Key said we didn’t have a debt problem. Two years of him as PM, and we sure have one now. When we learn exactly how dire things are later today, remember that National brought this on us by borrowing $3 billion a year for tax cuts that no-one noticed.
The sum Phil Heatley has so far spent trying to get three women and their families evicted from their state houses, an effort to look tough, is the equivalent to the cost of building two new state houses. Over half a million spent on an ultimately pointless exercise – one that’s far from finished.
It’s pretty bloody late in his tenure to be saying it, but Police Commissioner Howard Broad has joined with every expert in telling politicians that their braindead, populist policy of increasing the number of crimes and ramping up prison sentences has to stop. It’s not a solution to crime, it’s making it worse.
The argument against privatising prisons isn’t high principle (only the state should imprison people) or that this is an attempt at cost-cutting. No, the reason private prisons suck is they cost more. The last time Auckland Remand was privatised it didn’t save money. It cost $66,000 a year to imprison someone in Auckland remand vs $49,000 for a publicly-run equivalent.
The Nats are looking to cut $1.8 billion in spending over four years. Where from? What and who will be deemed to be “low quality” in need of “weeding out”? The answers are going to tell us a lot about the National Party’s values…
How economically illiterate do the Nats have to be to send the government’s research vessel Tangaroa to Singapore for a $20 million refit when VT Fitzroy at Devonport was ready and willing to do the work here? Sure the bid was a bit lower but did they consider the tax the government would gain, the fewer unemployed and the other benefits from keeping the work here in New Zealand?
So the govt wants to sue the Waihopai 3 for $1.1 mil. No pesky jury this time. The dudes only have a grand between them. Spending a couple of hundred thousand on lawyers’ fees to bankrupt some hippies. Doesn’t seem like the best use of taxpayer cash. Tell you what. If the govt really wants its $1.1 million they can take it out of our tax ‘cuts’. 25 cents each. That’ll be my tax cut pretty much gone.
During Question Time yesterday, Metiria Turei exposed National’s plan to subsidise mineral exploration by foreign companies in the most important parts of our national parks.
John Key refused to confirm Turei’s information but couldn’t deny it. Clearly, the Nats had been planning to slip it through in the Budget unnoticed.
Well, there can’t be any doubt now, Anne Tolley is this government’s worst minister. A failure that stands out among failures. She had […]
The first half of an excellent piece by Kent Dunston of Save the Basin (which is opposing the construction of flyovers around the […]
Steven Joyce has announced plans for a motorway from Puhoi to Wellsford at a cost of $2 billion ($1.4 billion in today’s money). […]
At first, I thought I must have been dreaming yesterday morning. There was John Banks loudly attacking central government politicians from Wellington. How dare […]
