The Auditor-General slams previous Government’s projects

The Herald reports:

Two of the former Government’s massive infrastructure programmes totalling $15 billion were rushed against the advice of officials leading to chaotic, costly blowouts just months after they were announced. …

He found that ministers received ample warning from officials prior to NZUP projects being announced that some would struggle to be delivered on time and on budget.

Ryan was also critical of the poor bookkeeping, which in some cases was so dire that to this day it is “difficult to determine from publicly available information all the initiatives that have received funding from the NZUP”, meaning the public can’t see where all of the $12b had been spent.

So the Ministers were warned the projects could not be delivered on time or budget, yet announced them all anyway as they were desperate for a poll boost.

And to this day, they can’t even trace where all the money went.

Also prior to the announcement, both the Ministry of Health and Treasury warned ministers that many of the proposed health projects under consideration for the NZUP were not ready to be announced.

Treasury warned it had “due to the time and information available”, they had “low confidence” the projects would be implemented quickly.

“On 29 January 2020, about one week after this advice was provided, the Minister of Health and Associate Minister of Health publicly announced several health projects. These included some projects that officials had advised were not ready to be announced,” the report said.

It found the Government appeared to be in a rush to announce the projects.

Isn’t this typical of Labour – their entire concern was the announcement, rather than actually delivering.

Ryan was particularly alarmed that the Government continued to spend large amounts of money without proper due process, despite a number of reports raising concerns about where this kind of rushed decision-making can lead.

“I have made similar observations about aspects of the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme, the Cost of Living Payment, the Provincial Growth Fund, and – most recently – the reprioritisation of the Provincial Growth Fund,” Ryan wrote, listing a number of other schemes he had investigated.

“It concerns me that significant spending of public money continues to occur without appropriate processes for ensuring value for money and transparent decision-making.”

So as the AG points out, this was not a one off. Tens of billions of dollars were spent on programmes that had no real scrutiny about whether they were value for money. This was not a bug, but a feature for Labour.