June 12, 2026 3:00pm by David Farrar

A useful reminder

Nick Mowbray reminds us of where our tax dollars went under Labour:

OU’RE WEEKLY REMINDER OF WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT UNDER THE LAST GOV. ( a few of thousands of examples)

  1. Wallaby eradication — $2.7 million to kill 18 wallabies. $153,000 per wallaby and 26,000 labour hours. Cheaper to fly them home business class.
  2. Virtual job expos — $835,000. 126 people attended. $6,626 per Zoom attendee.
  3. Global health recruitment campaign — $514,000. Result: 3 interviews. $171,000 per interview.
  4. Let’s Get Wellington Moving — $35m on consultants. Just $250k on actual construction. You read that right.
  5. Auckland Light Rail — $229 million. Six years. Not one metre of track. Burning $1.2m/week on consultants at peak.
  6. Three Waters — ~$1.2 billion torched on a policy nobody wanted, scrapped before delivering a single pipe. Included $14,500 to write a job description for a CEO who never existed.
  7. iReX ferries — $500m+ sunk. Ballooned from $551m to a projected $3 billion+ before cancellation. (NZ First also had fingerprints on the original deal — worth being upfront about.)
  8. RAT tests — $531 million sitting in warehouses. Storage at $100,000/day. Approved over a year late.
  9. Mongrel Mob meth rehab — $2.75 million. $239k catering. $157k marae hire. $100k hiring a van.
  10. Shorter shower campaign — $2.8 million. Printed in 7 languages. To tell you to take shorter showers.
  11. Auckland Harbour cycle/walking bridge — $51 million on planning before scrapped. No bridge.
  12. Lake Onslow pumped hydro — ~$100 million on feasibility studies. Not a shovel in the ground.
  13. Workforce Development Councils — $65 million/year for bodies critics said delivered little tangible value. Disestablished.
  14. RNZ/TVNZ merger — $20 million. Abandoned by Labour themselves.
  15. Ethnic women in politics research — $842,000. A university grant could’ve done it for a fraction.
  16. “Ulu Cavu Wig Tour” — $73,000 in taxpayer funding for the Arts Minister’s husband’s tour.
  17. Abandoned China immigration office — ~$3 million in rent on an office closed for over a year.
  18. Promoting Australian citizenship to Kiwis already in Australia — $10,000. Funding the brain drain with our money.

…and we could keep going.

We should never FORGET Labour. Just a small fraction of their wasteful ways.