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Taxpayers’ Union
The Taxpayers’ Union has continued to expose how the Government has frittered away the $62 billion Cv response fund.
The Cv response fund was 20 times larger than Shane Jones’s infamous Provincial Growth fund, and yet even before the current lock down, Grant Robertson had whittled it down from $62 billion to a measly $5 billion.
So, what happened to the money?
Grant Robertson is trying to tell New Zealanders that the money went toward essential business support like the wage subsidy. In reality, wage subsidies made up less than a quarter of the spending.
Below are some examples of how the money was actually spent. Judge for yourself whether this spending really has anything to do with Cv.
- Flood protection in the Far North: $12,500,000
- Cameras on fishing boats: $26,600,000
- “Regional digital connectivity”: $50,000,000
- Horse racing: $52,500,000
- “Public Interest” Journalism: $55,000,000
- Internet modems for students: $87,000,000 (even Mike Hosking’s kid got one)
- Affordable housing projects: $100,000,000
- “Transformative energy” projects: $155,000,000
- Various large-scale construction projects: $180,000,000
- Construction of one building at the University of Auckland: $200,000,000
- “Climate resilience” projects: $210,000,000
- Arts grants: $374,000,000 (e.g. $17 million for art therapy clinics)
- School lunches: $515,800,000 (yes, half a billion dollars)
- “Jobs for Nature”: $1,219,000,000 (e.g. the infamous wallaby-culling job creation scheme, which cost $200,000 per low-paying job created)
In short, the Government abused New Zealanders’ trust, exploiting a pandemic to establish New Zealand’s largest-ever political slush fund.
Following our work exposing this abuse of the covid fund,it’s good to see the Opposition parties now picking up our examples and pushing them hard in the media.
With a new lockdown imposing massive costs on businesses, households, and taxpayers, there is a real risk that the money will run out. Grant Robertson now claims that he can claw back some of the funding that was allocated but not spent – that’s almost an admission that he misused the fund.
But he’s also talking down the problem of the dwindling fund, saying that New Zealand’s overall economic position is better than expected. That’s code for: don’t worry, I’ll just keep borrowing.
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