Even the Auditor-General gave up
Some people think waste in the public sector is just the odd conference at a resort hotel. But the big ticket items are the massive cost blowouts on projects, with Corrections and Defence being the worst offenders.
Bernard Hickey blogs on this:
Late last week the Auditor General Kevin Brady reported back to the public that he had abandoned an investigation into why the cost of the Ministry of Defence’s NZ$2.2 billion programme for buying new ships and helicopters and upgrading planes had blown out by NZ$392.6 million.
He abandoned the investigation because the Ministry’s financial reporting systems were so poor that he couldn’t tell exactly why the costs had blown out.
This should indeed be a major story.
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Tags: Auditor-General, government spending
July 1st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Wonderful
See my post of earlier today if any of you Socialists need proof of what I said
And the Defence Force chiefs will have told the AG Oh whats $400 million It only 18% of 2.2 Billion A mere bagatelle old chap Nothing to be worried about.
Here Let us top up your rum
July 1st, 2008 at 11:18 am
Yep and over at “The Standard” they will be dividing it by 2 million and saying it’s only $1 week per taxpayer over 4 years, hardly worth worrying about.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am
Thats true gd, after all no private sector project has ever exceeded budget in the history of the planet!
July 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
How bizarre, I was looking at that just today & thinking I’d probably be the only saddo surfing the website of the AUditor General…
July 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am
sonic: and any private sector CEO that wasted this much money would be given the boot.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:39 am
Really, tell us Ryan when was the last time a major private sector CEO was “given the boot” without a million dollar severence deal?
July 1st, 2008 at 11:51 am
sonic old bean the adults are discussing a public sector financing matter. Didnt see any mention in DPF post about the private sector.
And in any case thats private as in not taxpayers money being pissed up against the wall by people employed by the taxpayer.
Dont threadjack old chap keep on message or is it too hard for you and the other Socialists watching your politicial masters being sliced diced chewed up and spat out by we superior beings.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:59 am
So GD…being such a ‘superior being’, you’d be able to outline exactly what you’ve done personally to ‘slice dice chew up spit out’ the Socialist’s political masters?
I’m suspecting it doesn’t extend too far past poorly punctuated blog comments…
July 1st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Rogz Just involved in some interesting correspondence with a senior Minister who started to dig a hole then kept on digging.
I would love to tell you more but as the saying goes if I did so I would have to kill you.
July 1st, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Sonic: “Really, tell us Ryan (sic) when was the last time a major private sector CEO was “given the boot” without a million dollar severence deal?”
Hey didn’t HC campain in 99 with a promise to end public sector golden handshakes?
July 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Well, when a private corporation “wastes” a couple of billion, it is, after all, their money (or their shareholders) to waste. More fool them. If government departments “waste” 2 billion, that’s my money going down the tube, and I don’t get a choice not to contribute. Different standards should apply. If I was a shareholder in a company that wastes that much money, I can ask questions and more importantly, I can sell my shares and get out. As a taxpayer, I have to take it in the wallet regardless.
If you can’t see the difference, then I can understand why you love socialism.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
“Well, when a private corporation “wastes” a couple of billion, it is, after all, their money (or their shareholders) to waste”
Thats funny, whenever someone shoplifts we are always told that the costs will be passed on to us through higher prices, yet when a CEO gets millions of dollars of a payoff it seems this will have no effect on Joe consumer.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Has anyone considered he may have found alledgedly illegal spending and based on past experiences he may have decided that as it would simply be retrospectively validated there was little point in trying to control how public money is spent?
July 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
sonic
If the ‘shoplifter’ is prosecuted then there is no cost passed onto other consumers. If the shoplifter is not caught or “validated” then the cost needs to be passed on somewhere.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
So the cost of the million dollar golden handshake is not passed on to consumers Burt?
July 1st, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Sonic is missing the point entirely. Private companies know what wasting money is bad, they don’t want to have to pass on rising costs to consumers as it makes them less competitive. That is of course if the waste hasn’t caused them to go out of business by not been able to pay their bills etc. Waste effects their bottom line, and ultimately their jobs. This is why private companies have robust financial reporting systems to they can identify any problems and rectify. Sometimes a pay out is cheaper than on going waste. However the AG has shown that there is no such concern for identifying and reducing waste in the Ministry of Defense, which is probably reflects the general attitude of the public sector. After all they can just go cap in hand to the government for more money. All this validated by plonkers who say, well its only a few million here, and only a few million there, well it only works out at $2 a week each taxpayer etc.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
sonic
Same rules apply sonic, if it was made illegally and is not found or “validated” then it needs to be passed on, if it was made legally then we have no reason to complain about the fact it is passed onto the consumer. If it were a monopoly then it’s going to piss people off becasue they have no ability to switch to a difffernt “supplier”.
Hope that helps.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Sonic
I must say, your attempts to distract the thread do a great job of allowing people to say a pile of stuff that readers wouldn’t bother reading if it were all posted as a big long… “This is how I see it”.
You are doing a great job.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Sorry Burt, any chance of translating that comment into English?
July 1st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Sonic is missing the point entirely.
Yup. Surprised? Me neither.
He’s just a little Scottish Hedgehog, so apart from the points on his back you can’t expect him to understand too much. We have been trying to educate him for what seems like decades on this site but he appears to be just as thick as the first day he came here.
Now me, I’m a chicken, chickens know things, hedgehogs – not so much.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:58 pm
And look what the cat dragged in.
All we need now is Ratbleater to show up and we’ll have the set!
July 1st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
No chance a cat would go near you witches eh sonic?
July 1st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
In case anyone hadn’t noticed there is an inversely proportional relationship between Labour poll results and socialist trolling/obfuscation activity on Kiwiblog.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Its amazing how burt and others have to spell out in abc the simple facts of life to sonic and the other Socialists.
Like they cant distinguish between how the public sector works and how the private sector works.
Good grief And these people get to vote. Like Ive said time and again until all potential voters have to pass an IQ test and political knowledge test before they cast a vote we wont the RIGHT and I do mean right people voting
July 1st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
sonic
The more often you ask unrelated questions…. the more often we get a chance to talk about the relevant issue.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Hi getstaffed, how are you “millions of witnesses” to events that never happened this fine day!
” Like Ive said time and again until all potential voters have to pass an IQ test and political knowledge test before they cast a vote we wont the RIGHT and I do mean right people voting”
If your lucky gd there “wont” be a spelling test.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing (Archilochus 7th century BC).
So is Sonic a hedgehog, a fox or something else entirely.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:16 pm
See sonic.. it’s like this.
Let’s take someone who doesn’t work at say 30yrs of age.
If they have lots of money from some savvy investment, invention, hit song.. whatever then that person choosing not to work doesn’t bother me in the slightest, all power to their elbow I say. But if someone is choosing not to work (although able to) and suck of the public tit then that person pisses me off.
This overspending issue (the thread) is the same… it’s about being able to tell the difference between shit and clay.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Sincere apologies sonic for my lack of keyboard skills the result of a early education before computers hence more comfortable with the pen than the keyboard.
Hope you make allowance for such as I try and cope with this new fangled technology.
Back on track ( pun intended) Have you seen the lineup to join Jimmy B as directors of Kiwirail
Im mightily impressed (NOT) with the business powerhouses. Should be able to lose quite a few millions over the next few years.
Oh well Its only dumbarse taxpayers money whatever
July 1st, 2008 at 3:59 pm
The media should be over this like a rash, in a similar way to how gleefully they printed the nonsense from Cullen and Clark that any cut in government expenditure would mean a cut in services. Brash tried to point out the obvious, that there was something wrong with an extra 22Bil being spent for no noticable return.
I still believe it was arguably the most expensive mistake in our history voting in this incompetent, wasteful govt. If they weren’t wasting such huge sums they could easily have abolished income tax to the lower paid. What a great thing that would be.
To the Sonics of the world, who promote an ideology over peoples lives and well being – shame on you.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:01 pm
It’s a law of the internet gd that whenever anyone writes a post bemoaning the stupidity of others there is always a spelling mistake in it.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
The elephant in the room for Socialists and the dumb people who vote for them, is that a private corporation MAKING A PROFIT AND paying its directors fat salaries/golden handshakes etc, is STILL as a rough rule of thumb, providing services/products to its customers at ONE HALF or less the cost to the taxpayer of the same or inferior services/products being provided by the government. Like the difference between Public/Private Health care. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID Kiwi voters who have failed to get a grip on this reality again and again, so that “using Private Sector resources” turns into a vote LOSER for everyone on the “Right” from Jenny Shipley onwards. DUH! DUH! DUH!
July 1st, 2008 at 4:32 pm
sonic, the ‘event’ happened for sure. i got the name of senior labour party person responsible for the hate speech wrong. my bad. but …
1. it was said – tick.
2. it was hate speech – tick.
3. it was said by a senior labour minister – tick.
4. it was witnessed by millions of tv viewers across multiple TV channels – tick.
5. it was picked up and perpetuated by the standard, frogblog etc etc – tick.
do try to keep up laddie.
and remember, you and your fellow troll-farm escapees are on trolling/obfuscation commission bonuses just now. back to work…. earn my hard earned an ruthlessly taxed dollars.
now, back on topic: perhaps you might like to tell us why it’s ok for the MoD to be unable to property account for how taxpayer money is spent?
edit: It’s a law of the internet gd that whenever anyone writes a post bemoaning the stupidity of others there is always a spelling mistake in it.. Actually that’s quite funny (and true)
July 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
PhilBest I would love to see some comparisons between the public sector and the private sector on costs for health care. What does it cost Southern Cross vs what does it cost a public hospital to deliver the same service and what is the quality comparison.
I betcha the differences would be eye watering. I would expect the quality would be comparable but the S/C costs would be very much lower.
Anyone know of evidence of this.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Yep. Evidence is that the ACC get their operations done private.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:38 pm
If military people want to do a job well it gets done that way. Obviously it wasn’t their priority.
The US military constantly has budget overruns, the Pentagon in 2002 lost track of $2.2 trillion. They’ve “lost track” of a lot more since then, but that’s another story. Some people may recall the NASA $10,000 hammer and $20,000 toilet seats scandal in Reagan’s time.
If you haven’t already worked it out, naturally this money at least in the states goes to black ops and why would we be any different? Personally I support huge funding for border security, defence and intelligence gathering. I wish we had a large and thriving defence industry producing masses of sharp pointy things. Sadly this hasn’t happened yet, but I fully support our military getting more funding and if this is what it takes to get around Hulun and her currently-less-than-merry band of poisonous vipers, I’m very happy indeed.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Sonic will not reply until 9.00 am, with a logoff at 5.00pm, as those are the hours her Liarbour paymasters pay her for. It is also obvious that just like Hell en & Mikhail, she has never run a business. If a business was as slack on its expenditure/accounting, IRD would nail them, but, as per usual, the Liarbour Government plays the “Do as I say, not as I do” card.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Maybe the airforce have secretly got their strike capability back, just hidden it in the overuns?
July 1st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Heh. A few weeks ago went and drove a tank in Christchurch (http://tanksforeverything.co.nz/). Guy tells me that he gets his tanks overseas, NZ Army cut theirs up for scrap rather than sell them. Worried that someone in NZ will amass more firepower than they have left? Seems to me that the private jokers who own spitfires or whatever already have more aerial dominance than the NZ Airforce do.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Not surprising really that NZDF can’t control its capital expenditure.
I mean, this is the same force which has more Wing Commanders than it has planes. This is the same force which has 50+ Lt Colonels and Brigadiers commanding an army with two battalions. This is the same force which bought 105 LAVs at $650m, but didn’t think about getting enough drivers to drive them (so most of LAVs are stored in expensive hangars).
July 1st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Greenjacket. Yet another example of the dumbing down of NZ. Now its permeated its way into the higher echelons of our ‘defence’ force. Oh dear, please give me a government of no more than 25 individuals with some common sense and business nous, who can control these lunatics.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I read the LAV purchase as being a deliberate sabotage by Hulun not a fuck up by the military.