Remember Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s surfing trip to Hawaii (coincidentally at the same time as she recorded $39,000 in taxpayer-funded international flights)?
Last week, Ms Ngarewa-Packer was spotted in the Cook Islands protesting the Cook Island’s new deal with China. Apparently, there’s not a protest she doesn’t want to attend she’s there to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary – despite it being a Parliamentary sitting week.
Naturally, we’ve had a few questions from supporters asking whether taxpayers footed the bill for the wedding holiday.
And I’d like to tell you either way, but I can’t. You see, unlike spending and travel by Ministers, non-ministerial Members of Parliament have a special carve-out from freedom of information laws. Parliamentary Services refuse to disclose anything other than the total amounts being spent — this is all the summary information we can get. No itemisation, no receipts, no reporting.
Zilch.Signing their own permission slip? 
In fact, the only control on MPs since the rules were loosened even further 18 months ago, is that MPs have to ask their Party Leader to take trips overseas on the taxpayer. Prior to that, permission could only be granted by the Speaker.
Without public transparency, the only control of this spending is the Speaker, Gerry Brownlee. Jordan has written to the Speaker asking him to confirm that taxpayers’ money was not used to fund a Cook Islands wedding-anniversary holiday.
But, the law is not on our side. The Speaker doesn’t even have to reply! And whenever we’ve asked Te Pāti Māori to answer questions, we’ve hit a brick wall. It’s almost as if they don’t think they’re accountable to taxpayers.
MPs spending is a secretive black hole. Only political pressure will see questions being asked, and ultimately transparency and accountability.
Please will you take 30 seconds to help this effort and demand transparency?
>> Send an email to the Speaker <<
KiwiBuild’s $77million black hole
KiwiBuild is back in the spotlight and, once again, it’s taxpayers left with the tab. 109 unsold homes have hit the market after Kāinga Ora was forced to buy them off private developers who couldn’t shift them themselves.
This was always the risk with the last Government’s dumb housing policies. Under Kiwibuild, developers got the upside reward, while taxpayers carried the risk. As a result, houses were commissioned in places they were never going to sell. Nuts.
What planet is the Public Service Association living on? We were very happy last week to see our Atlas Network operative taxpayer hero, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche calling out bureaucrats for getting pay rises automatically. Rewarding time-served rather than merit has seen costs bloat 72% since 2018, with the average bureaucrat’s paycheque now more than $101,000.
But performance pay has always been a hill to die on for the public sector unions like the Public Service Association (“PSA”) which depend on gliding-on public service ‘lifers’ to fill the Labour Party’s union coffers.
It’s bad enough that public sector unions argue that “high performance” means a “bad culture” but this new argument they’ve come up with takes the cake.
Is performance pay racist? Or sexist? According to the Public Service Association’s Fleur Fitzsimons – a former (you can probably guess) Labour Party candidate – performance pay is [checks notes] RACIST! Apparently, Māori and women can’t do well with performance pay. In Wellington’s worldview, they’re just not high performers.
Yes, incredibly, that’s really their argument:
As well as believing in the radical idea that public servants should be paid on, well, their performance, here at the Taxpayers’ Union we also believe in calling out racism where we see it… We are disgusted that such stereotypes are being used to suggest performance-based pay rises will see women, Māori, and Pasifika people miss out and have called it out.
We are baffled that in 2025 anyone would suggest that sex or race would make people less capable. Either Fleur Fitzsimons is a bad egg, or there is something deeply wrong with the culture at the PSA.
$4m woke workshops on the hospital wards The irony about the PSA, and so many other important Wokesters in Wellington, is that they’re fast to scream racist if, say, you want your doctors’ professional development to be focussed on things that save lives, not things like “indigenous knowledge and healing practices”.
Health NZ (Te Whatu Ora) has wasted $4m on Te Kurahuna workshops to turn health workers into ‘change-agents’ promoting indigenous knowledge and healing practices.
Our investigation reveals 11,000 staff (at anyone’s guess how much in lost productivity) are being sent to woke workshops rather than working. 
Te Kurahuna might be a familiar name, as only a few weeks ago we flagged that DIA have wasted close to a million dollars sending staff to the same programmes.Minister Brooke van Velden’s canned that spending, and we say it’s time for new Health Minister Simeon Brown to do the same in Health.How deep do these workshops go? It’s the grift that keeps of giving. $5 million in YOUR pocket or on a gold-plated park? Swings and roundabouts.
Tauranga ratepayers have just been slapped with a $5 million bill for a new kid’s playground. Our investigation shows exactly what we all already know – you can’t trust the council to build anything without costing an arm and a leg, even a few swings (and maybe a flying fox if you’re lucky).
The breakdown shows $640,000 was spent on consulting and management. Consulting. For a playground.
[and you though KCDC was bad —Eds]
$150,000 on Council staff costs. $361,000 on safety surfacing.
And more than $1.1 million was spent on landscaping and concrete (before the safety surfacing was added) And what paid for that platinum playzone? Tauranga residents’ 13.1% rates hike just this year alone.
If only Mayor Mahé Drysdale was nearby… 
Enjoy the rest of your week.
James Ross
Policy & Public Affairs Manager
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union
