Pee Kay
No Minister
A recent letter to the editor in the NZ Herald read “…when are we going to wake up as a nation and realise that we need more tax income to pay for all the health, education and infrastructure that the country needs attending to?”
Adding: “Future generations will be burdened with debt that will need to be repaid unless we are brave enough to change our tax structure to meet our growing needs.”
So here we have another economic visionary gracing the letters to the editor page, imploring the state to extract even more cash from our already empty wallets. Because, obviously to them, the only reason New Zealand’s hospitals are crumbling and our roads resemble the surface of the moon is that the government simply doesn’t have enough of our hard earned tax dollars to fritter away. The prevailing wisdom from these bleeding hearts is always the same: if we just tax our way to prosperity, future generations will magically inherit a debt-free utopia.
It is the classic ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ mentality. When the government spends and borrows itself into a financial black hole, the solution isn’t to look at the reckless spending – that’s just too easy. The writer’s solution is to buy a shinier, more expensive ambulance, funded by the taxpayer.
If we actually wanted to park the ambulance at the top of the cliff, maybe we would start doing something radical. Like look at the out of control governmental cost structures!
Real political courage isn’t inventing new ways to plunder the middle class: it’s finally paring back the bloated welfare state, downsizing the army of Wellington bureaucrats who spend their days printing regulatory red tape and, to me, the biggest need is to turn off the multi-million dollar funding tap for race-based, divisive, Māori-only structures. Structures that are explicitly designed to benefit one section of society.
If you want to know what the state considers essential spending while our core infrastructure crumbles, you only have to look at the obscure pipelines of Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK), which routinely funnels fortunes into targeted tribal accounts.
When you take a look at the actual numbers it is quite frightening.
TPK’s Whanau Ora Commissioning pipeline alone sucks up a massive $179 million per year. This recipient of taxpayer funding hoovers up hundreds of millions of public welfare and health dollars, then redirects it away from general public agencies and into tribal managed trusts.
While originally launched in 2010 with a modest footprint of around $33 million per year, the model experienced a massive funding acceleration over the last decade, primarily driven by multi-year budget boosts under the Labour led government and additional allocations during the Covid-19 pandemic response.
Immense public resources are diverted away from universal health and social services to bankroll a parallel, devolved, Māori-specific health network.
Over the last 10 years (2016–2026), Whanau Ora commissioning has consumed approximately $1 billion in total taxpayer funds via TPK.
Imagine the number civil servants who are kept busy managing a parallel, race specific bureaucracy that duplicates the exact same public services.
Then there’s the Māori Housing Network. Rather than providing nationwide infrastructure for all citizens, the government uses this fund to build localised tribal housing. It’s the ultimate ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’. Subsidising a race-specific housing market instead of fixing the broken economic policies that made housing unaffordable for everyone in the first place. The scale of this parallel funding is substantial. Between 2016 and 2026, the Māori Housing Network distributed an estimated $150 million to $180 million through its annual baseline. But that was just the foundation: a broader multi-year injection subsequently poured $380 million directly into targeted papakāinga infrastructure (communal housing built on ancestral Māori land). Combined, these multi-million-dollar pipelines allow the state to routinely bypass universal housing networks in favour of a race-specific delivery model.
Next, let’s look at the Māori Development Fund. This fund serves as a massive cash machine for tribal administrative costs and activist projects. By pouring millions into ‘Māori aspirations,’ the government ensures an endless stream of work for the Wellington bureaucracy while taxpayers watch their own public services crumble. Under the 2026 Budget allocations, this broad-scope umbrella grant system receives a massive $38.21 million per year. It serves as a broad, government-backed cash machine to fund localised tribal operations and cultural ‘aspirations’.
Under the “Going for Growth with Māori” framework, the Māori Development Fund injected $5.3 million directly into commercial agribusinesses. These included a $2.6 million grant to Akaroa King Salmon for infrastructure upgrades, and $1.5 million to Hineuru Orchards for commercial cherry protection against weather and birds.
This is where it gets murky: TPK officially prohibits buying land or buildings. This rule is bypassed by funding high-cost ‘productivity assets’. This allows taxpayer cash to be converted into corporate equity, giving select tribal exports an unfair market advantage by completely insulating them from the commercial debt standard Kiwi businesses face.
Over the 10-year period from 2016 to 2026, the Māori Development Fund was allocated a cumulative total of $250 million to $300 million. Despite the political rhetoric, very little of this capital is passed directly to grassroots tribal projects. It operates under a strict, corporate co-investment model, forcing Māori-owned businesses and exporters to match public money dollar-for-dollar just to unlock economic support.
But the fund demanding the utmost public scrutiny is the Regional Infrastructure Fund. It is a masterclass in political obfuscation. Under the guise of “regional growth,” this $1.2 billion government pipeline is able to channel millions in taxpayer cash straight into the balance sheets of tribal corporations. While these grants represent a minority of the overall fund, they effectively shield wealthy tribal businesses from standard commercial risk at the public’s expense.
But beneath the political hyperbole of this new Regional Infrastructure Fund lies an unmistakable pong of political hypocrisy from both National and NZ First. Didn’t National spend years telling voters that Shane Jones couldn’t be trusted with a provincial chequebook? Yet, after watching Jones dispense the entirety of his infamous $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund under the 2017 Labour/NZ First coalition, National turned around and handed him a brand new $1.2 billion wallet the exact second they needed his votes to secure power.
It is not difficult to imagine National agreeing to rebrand that old Provincial Growth Fund simply to appease New Zealand First during coalition negotiations. Thus, leaving the same targeted allocation pipeline completely intact under Minister Shane Jones. Business as usual!
Look at the unashamed paradox within NZ First; the party wins votes by fiercely campaigning against race based policies, yet Jones uses his ministerial authority to channel millions from the Regional Infrastructure Fund directly into Māori corporate assets and multi-million-dollar marae upgrades.
Administered by the Ministry for Regional Development, the $1.2 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund frequently operates as a protected financial shield for select tribal entities.
The political fingerprints of Winston Peters and Shane Jones are all over this fund’s balance sheet. Recent major allocations distributed under their coalition banner include $8.6 million to construct New Plymouth’s Ngāmotu Marae and a $10 million package for the Wainui Marae.
This, even though marae throughout the country were handed over a massive $42 million from Lotto grants for the 2025/2026 financial year alone.
By rebranding marae upgrades as essential “economic infrastructure”, the government has completely changed the rules of the game. In short, taxpayers foot the bill for the expensive construction work, while the corporate arms of wealthy tribes sit back and pocket the long-term capital gains without risking a cent of their own cash.
Across two coalition governments, Shane Jones has wielded unprecedented personal leverage over a combined $4.2 billion in regional development funds.
Between 2018 and 2020, Jones fully exhausted his infamous $3.0 billion Provincial Growth Fund under Labour. Now, despite years of National Party condemnation calling it a corrupt slush fund, Jones has seamlessly extracted a fresh $1.2 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund from Christopher Luxon to secure power. Handing a single minister $4.2 billion to hand-pick corporate and regional winners is a masterclass in political leverage, and a monument to National’s commercial hypocrisy.
If you think today’s back-channel grift is out of control, cast your mind back to the absolute pinnacle of the Māori centred spending frenzy in Budget 2022. This was the moment Jacinda Ardern’s government dropped any pretence of fiscal sanity and poured a staggering $1.2 billion into Māori initiatives. Then Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson was so intoxicated by the sheer scale of the plunder that he couldn’t help but boast to the media, bragging that it was the largest Māori-specific budget package “in the history of government”.
It was historical, alright. An historical assault on the wallet of the New Zealand taxpayer.
The breakdown of this $1.2 billion blowout reads like a shopping list for parallel government infrastructure. A massive $579.9 million was burned on Māori health, providing the foundation for the disastrous, top-heavy Māori Health Authority. Another $166 million was funnelled into Whānau Ora to bypass standard welfare channels, while $40 million went to Māori media to ensure the Māori megaphone remained well lubricated.
One has to marvel at the logic of the recent letter writer who so earnestly pleaded for “more tax income”. Before penning that letter, did they spare a single thought for the absolute farce of our current fiscal reality?
From just the four mentioned agencies we have casually gifted nearly $7 billion in taxpayer funds to a select section of society, a figure that is, in all probability, just the tip of a very large iceberg. Just think how much easier it would have been to fund actual roads, schools, and hospitals if that $7 billion had remained in the Crown’s bank account instead of being handed out as cultural prizes.
Let’s not forget the extra $42 million in Lotto grants sprinkled over marae around the country. Because nothing says ‘essential infrastructure crisis’ quite like scratchy funded community upgrades!
Of course we could afford world-class roads, schools, and hospitals – we just can’t afford them while simultaneously gifting billions to a single, privileged section of society.
This article was originally published by No Minister.
