WINZ Conference Mark II
Another sign of third termitis. Most will recall the fuss over a WINZ conference in 1999 which cost $235,000.
Phil Heatley revealed yesterday that Hosuing NZ has spent $65,000 on a conference for 94 managers at the luxury Tongariro Lodge.
The third termitis is the staunch defence of it by Minister Maryan Street, instead of realising the political impact of holding a conference in a luxury resort.
There are two issues when it comes to public service conferences – cost and location.
In terms of cost, the conference cost around $700 a person. It isn’t an outrageous amount, but neither is it as cheap as if you held the conference in Auckland or Wellington where most of the staff are.
The bigger issue is location. A luxury lodge location is a bad look for a taxpayer funded agency. Doesn’t matter if you get a discount. And if you are WINZ or Housing NZ – an agency tasked with helping low income families especially, it is even more inappropriate.
Street should have acknowledged this, rather than defended the decision.
If you hold the conference at the Rotorua Novotel or the Dunedin Holiday Inn, no one will criticise you for it.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Suckers. Perception is more important than reality.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Thousands of people are on waiting lists for a house ( including myself) have to watch some distorted Minister on TV called Ms M Street tell lies protecting the gravy train that the girls and eunuchs have implemented through the dysfunctional liarbour scum agenda. What a waste of money and what an insult to the under privileged. This government will go down in history as evil!!
May 28th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Having visited the establishment in question, I suggest the definition of ‘luxury’ is being stretched a long way. Downward.
More questionable than the actual venue is the location – a long long way from any major Housing NZ office. The major cost is likely to be in travel expenses and down time for staff, rather than the venue and catering.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Street was abysmal on Campbell Live last night. She defended the spending to the hilt – her only concern was “the look”. I guess that if that is her attitide, her ambitions to be among the Labour leadership are well grounded!!
May 28th, 2008 at 7:59 am
They could have held it at a church hall in Porirua and the church would have appreciated the donation.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:30 am
What a media beat-up! An all up cost of $65k for 94 managers for a two-day national conference including all expenses (food, travel, etc), seems pretty frugal to me. The sad thing is, is that it is just “the look”. If they had spent a similar amount at an inner-city 4-star hotel, then no-one (except the ‘all SOE management are useless idiots and so any spending is a waste crowd’) would be complaining.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I’ve also visited the Lodge in question and would say it sits squarely in the ‘adequate but nothing special’ category…also, $250/head/night is pretty damn cheap…if this is too luxurious, where would you rather it had been held?
And D4J, shock horror, but do you think they might have been discussing ways to get some of those thousands of people into houses? Nah, they were probably all waiting to take a turn on the ‘all weather tennis court’…
May 28th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Chris – “The media beat-up” line was used re the Labour party leadership struggle. Surely the same phrase can’t credibly be used here too?
Or is there real substance to the Goff leadership hi-jinx?
May 28th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I blogged about this myself this morning, effectively concluding that both Labour and National are acting like a bunch of dimwits over the issue.
First, we know that the government (ie: the *taxpayer*) employs an army of PR people and consultants to advise them on their every move. Yet, despite all this expenditure, nobody figured that holding a weekend like this at a luxury venue was going to cause problems.
As Roark hinted, in the world of politics, perception *is* reality.
The fact of the matter is that they got a pretty good deal. $250/night including food and conference facilities is a price that I suspect would be hard to better and, in a perfect world, that should be the sole criteria for selecting the venue.
Of course we know that politicians (especially in election year) are far more interested in point-scoring than they are in judging the merits of a decision or the pragmatism of expenditure.
So for National, this was surely a gift from God — a chance to show just how much “excess” was involved in the civil service and therefore how effective their austerity programme will be in cutting back costs without cutting services.
Unfortunately, even National didn’t take the time to get costings from other venues so as to measure the magnitude of the “excess” in this case. Or maybe they did — but couldn’t come up with a cheaper venue so decided not to mention the result of their research?
The bottom line however, is that our politicians aren’t elected to “score points” against each other. They’re elected to run the country in a responsible and efficient manner. I wonder how much taxpayer money has been wasted simply debating this non-issue and talking to the media about it?
I just wish they’d do the job they’re paid to do rather than grandstanding and employing a bunch of PR consultants that obviously aren’t worth a penny.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Sounds good until you stop and think about the way they spent money.
Did they hire two busses and take people from Auckland and Wellington to the conference? NO
Did they hire two small planes to take them? NO
“the people all drove”
A rented car
A personal car
A rented car each or with capacity loading
A personal car per 4 people (to make it a reasonable fit)
I wonder what the fuel cost was, and I am NOT going to think about the carbon emissions!
[DPF: And each car would claim mileage at 70c+/km.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I don’t think the spending of 65K is inappropriate per se. This expenditure would’ve been budgeted for. However, a legitimate question is: where’s the bang for taxpayers’ bucks? If some of the managers at the conference had received bonuses for their performace during the year, then fair enough. Having said that, some of the managers at Housing NZ are no doubt receiving bonuses as well as attending conferences like this one. The question is: why do staff need to go off-site in order to generate wonderful ideas? And if great ideas can only be generated by going to luxury lodges, then maybe staff should permanently relocate there!
Maryan Street has admitted that it is not a good look. I concur.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Another way to look at it, would a company of comparable size in the private sector be able to justify spending that much on a management conference in the current economic climate?
May 28th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I saw Ms Street last night on Campbell Live last night and I would have to agree she was appalling. If she’s worried more about the look than the principle, then she’s completely barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know of any one on a waiting list, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a free couple of nights at a motel courtesy of the Govt. David Parker said on Morning Report this morning that as State Services Minister, he was not going to allow this excess to happen anymore. As for the Housing Ministry managers, unfortunately if you are bereft of ideas or vision, it’s unlikely to change regardless of where you gather to try and harness it.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Quite. Lefties should just admit the error of their ways wherever possible actually; they are, after all, always wrong.
Never mind that $250 per person per night for rooms, meals and use of conference facilities ACTUALLY IS A PRETTY GOOD DEAL for the taxpayer…
May 28th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Sounds reasonable value to me. What is all the fuss about?
May 28th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
BUT WHATS CHANGED ,they are still the same dogs now as they were before the taxpayer provided break.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
In the house today, Phil Heatley was asking further questions about spending by the Department, in regard to another luxury retreat. The Minister did not have the necessary information as it was a supplementary question, so look out for more shock horror headlines
May 28th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
The army has shitloads of tents and a fair bit of space in Waiouru or Tekapo.
Send them there for their meetings if they want to motivate their staff about housing.
BYO swani just like it was for me thanks.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
I’m sure this kind of carry on won’t be happening during the first term of the National/ACT Government later this year. There will be some impressive saving to be had in the Public Sector. All the better to deliver where it counts, Tax Cuts.
Two areas of potential savings are to place a stop on the recruitment of new staff. The turnover is so high in the Public Sector that soon you would be making some real savings in terms of staff costs.
The other area of cost savings is to impose a 10% percent across the board budget cutback (Or some other meaningful percentage). I’m sure Public Sector managers would have no problem achieving this goal with items like this conference as just one area of waste that can be eliminated.
It took Labour nine years to bloat the Public Sector to where it is today. It would be great if a National/ACT Government could reverse this completely in their first three year term.