Take your pick
When Jacinda Ardern was elected as leader of the Labour government she promised the people of New Zealand that she would provide the most open and transparent government and at one time even stated that her government was the one source of truth and we should only believe the government.
Overall the truth is not quite so rosy though because when you look at the government’s statistics, on practically every single metric her administration has failed.
Child poverty levels have risen under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership, as have carbon emissions. The gun buy-back scheme implemented after the Christchurch mosque attack was nothing short of an expensive PR disaster that actually achieved very little in real results.
Since again taking power after the last election, with an absolute majority, she has assumed unprecedented additional powers most under the pretext of protecting our health.
Her government has introduced a bill under which they have proposed a separate Health system for Maori managed by Maori and with the power of veto over all health board funding throughout New Zealand.
As New Zealanders we have always prided ourselves on being an inclusive multi-racial society. Yet under the present Labour Government we are heading down a path of separatism with our society divided by race based on a factually incorrect interpretation of Treaty of Waitangi documentation.
On the basis of false assumptions and fabrications, democracy is being sacrificed, and New Zealand returned to tribal rule.
This Open and Transparent Government set up the $55 million “Public Interest Journalism Fund”. We were told was to help the media deal with the effects of Covid, but like lots of other decisions, the devil was in the detail.
When it was analysed we could see that this was another prop under Prime Minister Ardern’s government attempts to divide New Zealand on the basis of race, given the requirements for recipients to promote the government’s position in regard to their current interpretation of the Treaty documents.
Under condition three of the application documents, all fund recipients are required to “Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.
In regard to the “Public Interest Journalism Fund” there is a direct link between the funding and the promotion of Government policy. Does this not equate to corruption of the media by government? At the very least it effectively means that the media have been silenced by this current Labour government.
Jacinda Ardern has made many statements since taking over office as Prime Minister and has very rarely been challenged on them but it is time she explained what she actually meant when she made these claims.
Some examples of her government’s openness, transparency and “one source of truth”:
And these are only a small selection of the times where her government has gone from making announcements from her pulpit of truth; to actually in my opinion making them from the lectern of lies.
The latest example of this “most open and transparent government -the one source of truth” is the recent report from the Auditor General on the $290 million “Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme”
The $290 million Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme (STAPP) formed part of a $400 million government response to support the tourism sector. Excerpts copied below:
“STAPP aimed to provide rapid financial support for strategically significant tourism assets that contribute significantly to the region that they are in and to tourism in New Zealand.
Concerns have been raised in the media and with the Auditor General’s Office about how STAPP was managed. In particular, tourism businesses have questioned the clarity and transparency of STAPP’s criteria for funding and whether they were applied consistently.
Because of these concerns, and the amount of public money involved, he decided to inquire into the STAPP eligibility criteria for funding and the process for assessing funding applications.
It is important that New Zealanders have trust and confidence that public money has been spent appropriately.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (the Ministry) designed the application and assessment processes with the understanding that it would cover up to 50 tourism businesses with strategic tourism assets. In the end, 127 tourism businesses received funding.
Clear criteria and assurance processes create trust because people feel that they have been dealt with fairly and transparently. Criteria also need to be clear so that decision-makers can verify that the criteria have been met.
One key criterion was that tourism businesses applying for funding had to have “exhausted all other avenues of support”.
The Ministry did not seek information to support each tourism business’s representation about this criterion.
In the Auditor General’s view, more thought should have been given to what corroborating information could have been sought and how officials could verify at a later stage whether the criteria had in fact been met. Ultimately, officials advised that they could not confirm whether applicants had in fact exhausted all other avenues of support. The Tourism Recovery Ministers did give funding to tourism businesses with profitable parent companies, including two parent companies that received funding of $31.2 million and $30 million respectively for their subsidiary tourism businesses.
In his view, a scheme should not include criteria if they are ambiguous or inconsequential. That does not provide clarity to applicants nor does it provide confidence to the public and Parliament that public money is being spent as intended.
The Tourism Recovery Ministers decided to fund all tourism businesses that scored more than 15 out of 30 points in the assessment process. They also decided to fund all eligible Māori tourism businesses, including those that scored less than 15 out of 30 points in the assessment process so effectively if the business was owned by Maori they received funding even if they scored Zero!”
Just another example of this government’s racially divisive decision making.
“Ministers have broad discretion to make decisions. However, all decisions to spend public money come with an obligation to ensure that the decision-making is consistent and transparent. We saw limited evidence explaining the reasons for the decisions. Without those records, those who have made the decisions are not able to adequately explain why funding was provided.
In the Auditor Generals view, this is not acceptable practice, regardless of the circumstances. To ensure that the public confident in the integrity of the decisions made, the reasons for this should be clearly explained and well documented.
At the time of writing his report, $166.1 million had been allocated to tourism businesses. STAPP was designed and rolled out quickly in an environment of significant uncertainty. Some STAPP criteria were unclear and it appears that Ministers’ decisions were made against a backdrop of uncertainty as to whether some key criteria were met.
This, combined with the decisions made that diverged from officials’ advice and the limited documentation to explain the divergence, makes it hard to determine whether the funding was applied fairly in accordance with the published criteria and the extent to which it represents value for money.
Trust and confidence in government depends on transparency and accountability when spending public money. This trust and confidence can be undermined where the criteria are not clear and when some applicants are treated, or are perceived to be treated, differently than most applicants or where there is limited documentation supporting decisions made by Ministers.
The Auditor General stated that they saw aspects of each of these factors in their investigation.”
Taking the above into account I believe that the Auditor General’s report basically says that they have no real idea how the money was distributed as there was no documentation of the process or the Minister’s reasoning. Given this it was almost impossible to decide whether the STAPP funding represented value for money.
One example of this was the Tourism Recovery Ministers agreeing to fund Whale Watch Kaikōura. The Auditor General did not see any evidence to identify what criteria the Tourism Recovery Ministers used when making this decision. They also did not see any advice from Ministry officials even though Whale Watch Kaikōura was provided $1.5 million of grant funding.
So Whale Watch Kaikōura got $1.5 million of taxpayer money from Ministers on the basis of no criteria and no advice.
Which one would you pick Incompetence or Corruption?