Newshub reports:

A building manager in central Auckland alleges some of his Kāinga Ora tenants have assaulted, abused and threatened to stab him. …

Building manager Paul* has lived in his Auckland CBD building for over three years, the exact location of which Newshub has agreed not to publish over fear of retaliation from his tenants.

He is responsible for over 180 apartments and a community of about 300 people. Several of these apartments are tenanted by Kāinga Ora residents, all of whom are single people or couples. There aren’t any families.

Over the past three years, Paul says he and his team have experienced numerous incidents of anti-social behaviour from Kāinga Ora tenants.

“[There are] two very serious issues, one is threatening to kill me – I was threatened to be stabbed – and what makes that particularly concerning is that individual was on the same floor as me and my wife’s absolutely terrified. The other one is the assault – that’s with myself and a younger staff member,” Paul tells Newshub.

Threatening to kill the building manager should see the tenant evicted. But no.

But despite reporting these allegations to the agency, including sending CCTV footage as evidence, he says he’s “pretty much been ignored” by them.

It is very clear that once again Kainga Ora are the worst landlord in NZ. If they were a private sector landlord, the Police would be arresting them as a crime accomplice.

Kāinga Ora says it works collaboratively and professionally with many body corporates and building management teams in the Auckland CBD.

John Tubberty, the agency’s regional director for central Auckland, says they value the relationships they have with management teams and work hard to make sure any issues that arise are addressed and resolved quickly.

He says while there can be points of difference, they want to listen, understand and work together to solve problems.

Note the use of all the buzz words such as collaborate, value, listen, understand etc. But nothing about action.

“Over the past two years, Kāinga Ora has been committed to working with [Paul’s] body corporate and building management. Our responses have included phone calls, face-to-face meetings, email correspondence and direct communication with the body corporate chair,” Tubberty says.

So they’ll answer the phone, and have meetings and send e-mails. But the one thing they won’t do is actually take action against tenants who threaten to kill.

“As part of doing this, we seek to identify the root cause of any customer issues as they arise and tailor our approach in a way that works for each individual and their whanau.”

More buzz words. Still nothing about having minimum standards of behaviour for tenants.

“Often we make progress by working with people and families directly and other specialist agencies in addressing the very different life circumstances people come from and their sometimes quite complex needs.”

Note their entire focus is on the tenants who are doing the terrorising, not on the victims of the resigns of terror.

RNZ reports:

Former senior figures have accused the Greens of jettisoning core principles as party discontent surfaces over its co-operation agreement in government.

Ex-MPs Sue Bradford and Catherine Delahunty say the agreement makes no sense and that the party’s position in government amounts to a failure of leadership.

Delahunty criticised her former colleagues for not pointing to an “unholy alliance between banks and the government” that accounted for record bank profits, inflated house prices and growing inequality.

Former co-leader and current head of Greenpeace New Zealand Russel Norman has also called Green minister James Shaw’s climate position “simply not credible”.

RNZ can reveal a number of activists have recently stepped away from the party, including former executive and policy branch members.

They accuse co-leader Shaw of having an autocratic style and complain that the party executive is not holding the caucus and leadership to account over policy decisions in government.

Fairly significant to have a former co-leader attack a current co-leader.

Dennis Wesselbaum writes:

Soon, the Government is going to announce its plan for the so-called “social unemployment insurance” which will be in place by 2023.

We do not have details about its precise design, but what we hear is that the new scheme will pay up to 80 per cent of income for up to half a year, if an employee loses their job. In any case, the reform will be a historic turning-point.

This policy, however, will reduce welfare (wellbeing would be more politically correct), increase unemployment, increase the duration of unemployment, reduce income, increase inequality, and lead to higher inflation. This outcome is robust and well-known in the field of macro-labour economics.

Every working New Zealander will have their take home pay drop, with an ACC type levy/tax imposed on our income to pay for this.

Recent experiences in Spain and Germany have shown that increasing the duration of unemployment insurance increases level and duration of unemployment. The probability of being unemployed for 12 months, for example, increases from 15 per cent to 40 per cent, if you move from a no unemployment insurance scheme to a one-year unemployment insurance scheme.

So we pay more tax so people can spend longer unemployed.

Even worse, be prepared to have lower incomes, because all of this will be financed via an income tax increase. Taxes will increase by about 3-4 per cent. This tax hike will damage economic growth, by reducing incentives to invest and work. This will additionally shrink the supply side, which further fuels inflation.

In conclusion, you will be paying higher income taxes, have lower income, and pay higher prices such that the Government can implement a policy which will be harmful for the economy in many ways and reduces welfare – which this Government claims to be its raison d’être.

Coming to us very soon.

Stuff reports:

We seem to have dodged a bullet with Omicron so far. But how long will our luck hold?

The Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria are currently struggling to keep their heads above water, with 45,000 reported cases in NSW in the past 24 hours.

Experts and politicians agree its arrival in New Zealand is inevitable – and they are grappling with the questions: When do we let Omicron in? And how?

The number of cases is not a hugely useful metric. Take the US for example. The number of daily cases is a massive 219% higher than a year ago, yet the number of deaths is 36% lower.

University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely has been outspoken in his stance on Omicron: it’s coming, so let’s front foot it.

Blakely is in the thick of an Omicron outbreak in Victoria, but – somewhat controversially – believes New Zealand is in a good position to “embrace” Omicron.

95% of the eligible population have had at least done dose and 92% a second dose. So why are we still Fortress NZ? Are we waiting for 96%? 97%?

Omicon is inevitable, and I think we’re far better to have it come into NZ in summer, than in winter.

A guest post by Melissa Lee:

New Zealand’s digital economy is in a growing crisis. We simply don’t have enough workers with the skills and expertise to make our technology sector flourish like the economic powerhouse of innovation it has been as a vanguard during these tough couple of years. With closed borders, the lottery of misery in MIQ (a lottery that may extend well into next year if the Government rescinds it’s border opening plans..) and a lack of a clear direction for high quality digital sector learning and professional development in New Zealand, we are facing a deep problem for the future of New Zealand’s economy.

The Government this week announced 600 spaces for critical tech workers to be allowed into New Zealand. That sounds great but was based on the premise that the borders will be open at the time they are recruited. If they remain closed the MIQ lottery of misery stems its ugly head and it will be countless months for those roles to be filled. What’s worse is it’s only 600 roles when 3000 is probably too few for the uplift in capability to put the next stage of advancement into the Kiwi digital economy. A quick look on seek this week showed nearly 2800 jobs being advertised for the Information and Communications Technology sector. 600 overseas recruits won’t cut it and neither will employing under-skilled local New Zealanders regardless of the salary offered because they lack the years and on the job expertise needed to do the job. We don’t want the next Waikato DHB Cybersecurity incident, Reserve Bank Data Breach or Fisher and Paykel Ransomware attack to happen because our government and our companies could not keep their data safe, one of the most critical issues facing New Zealand with the digital worker shortages domestically and at the border. Not having the people on hand to keep our cyber borders safe and not having trained staff well versed in a variety of technological trades to protect Kiwi businesses is a blight on our tech sector.

New Zealand needs to invest in digital careers today and we also need to invest in getting offshore talent here as soon as possible. It is vital for the future of our tech sector and our digital economy. We must have a cyber-resilient nation and our economy must have the tools it needs to continue to grow our digital sector as we look ahead to 2022 and beyond.

National cares deeply about the future of New Zealand’s Digital economy and it is my priority as National’s Spokesperson to champion every aspect of the Digital sector in our economy. I am proud that National was the only party to have a policy in 2020 that focused on a strong technology platform and we are still advocating for innovative policies for the digital economy in our tech issues paper released a few weeks ago. If you have ideas to resolve New Zealand’s digital crisis get in touch with me and the National team. We want to hear your views and build the best possible policy platform as we prepare to return to Government in 2023.

The Free Speech Union has put out their year in review. They have had a significant impact for the public good. Key aspects of the year are:

• Won a court case against Palmerston North City Council who tried to cancel a venue booking on the basis of political opinion.
• Won on a couple of key points at the Court of Appeal on Auckland Council’s decision to also cancel an event due to the political opinions of the speakers and had the Supreme Court grant leave to appeal on the very important issue of the heckler’s veto.
• Supporters generated over 75% of submissions on the Government’s proposed new hate speech laws
• Successfully assisted a Waikato University lecturer who faced disciplinary action due to his lectures on critical thinking and comments on religion
• Helped defend the Listener Seven, especially those facing expulsion from the Royal Society
• Have battled against Council Code of Conducts that interfere with the free speech rights of Councillors
• Have helped a number of members in cases with their employers

A great much needed union. You can join it here.

From UN Watch:

1. UN Elects Iran to Top Women’s Rights Body
2. UN Fires Whistleblower for Revealing They Handed Names of Dissidents to China
3. UNHRC Urgent Session on Afghanistan Ignores Taliban
4. Syria’s Assad Regime Elected to WHO Executive Board
5. UN Condemns Israel 14 Times, Rest of the World 5
6. UN Monitor Blames West for Venezuela Collapse, Absolves Maduro
7. Dictators Now Comprise 68% of UN Human Rights Council
8. Belarus Elected to UN Commission on Crime Prevention
9. UN Rights Council Ends Yemen Investigation After Saudi Pressure
10. UN Review Praises Slave-Holding Mauritania’s Human Rights Record

Professor Elizabeth Rata writes:

With the sudden emergence into our political life of the revolutionary report He Puapua, it is clear New Zealanders are at a crossroads. We will have to decide whether we want our future to be that of an ethno-nationalist state or a democratic-nationalist one.

Ethno-nationalism has political categories based on racial classification – the belief that our fundamental identity (personal, social and political) is fixed in our ancestry. Here the past determines the future. Identity, too, is fixed in that past. In contrast, democratic-nationalism has one political category – that of citizenship – justified by the shared belief in a universal human identity.

These two opposing approaches to how the nation is imagined, constituted and governed are currently in contention. We will have to choose which form of nationalism will characterise New Zealand by 2040.

This is absolutely the choice ahead of us – whether to go down the path of (formerly) Fiji with ethno-nationalism or democracy based on citizenship.

Liberal democracy can accommodate identification with the ancestral group in the civil sphere. Inclusive biculturalism allows for the evolving social practice of a hybrid Maori and settler-descendant culture, one enriched by diverse migration. Exclusive biculturalism, on the other hand, takes those ethnically or racially categorised groups into the constitutional sphere of legislation and state institutions. 

No surprise that I support liberal democracy.

Ethnic fundamentalism is no better, no worse than the myriad of other fundamentalisms that some individuals impose upon themselves (or have imposed upon them) to give their lives meaning. It becomes a danger to liberal societies regulated by democratic politics when ethnicity is politicised. By basing a governance  system of classification and categorisation on historical rather than contemporary group membership, we set ourselves on the path to ethno-nationalism. ‘He Puapua’  means a break. It is used in the Report to mean “the breaking of the usual political and social norms and approaches.” The transformation of New Zealand proposed by He Puapua is indeed a complete break with the past. For this reason it is imperative that we all read the Report then freely and openly discuss what type of nation do we want – ethno-nationalism or democratic nationalism?

It’s a debate we should be having, rather than have it imposed bit by bit as a fait accompli.

Sub-Zero Politics writes:

I have been highlighting my Parents’ Nightmare situation on Blogs (esp The Standard) & Twitter since April 2019 & speculated right from the start that this is probably happening throughout New Zealand, including to other elderly people … really relieved that this absolute scandal is finally, finally seeing the light of day. 

My Parents (aged 90 & 91) have been forced to endure 4 years of constant, prolonged violent intimidation and extreme anti-social behaviour (the latter including being very regularly kept awake until dawn, sometimes over 2 or 3 consecutive days) from the Kainga Ora tenant on the other side of their dividing-wall in a two-house Unit (My Parents have lived in their house for almost 60 years & have owned it since the 1970s).

This Nightmare situation has resulted in enforced chronic sleep deprivation over a very prolonged period (with all the associated symptoms of extreme exhaustion), severe stress & genuine fears for personal safety on a continuous basis (resulting in all the profoundly negative health consequences that inevitably follow … my Mother, usually healthy, has had to be hospitalised twice in the last 14 months, each time for a week or so, coming very close to dying on the first of these occasions & bordering on suffering a stroke on the second … & my Father, who has always been in exceptionally good health, has very recently suffered a heart attack).

No-one of any age, but especially a couple on their 90s, should have to endure four years of intimidation and harassment.

Based on my diary entires, my Parents have suffered precisely 116 – let me repeat that … 116 !!! – really large-scale explosions of violent intimidation since their neighbouring tenant arrived in late 2017. Together with several hundred mid-level, more minor & sporadic acts of violence & intimidation. The latter occur on an almost daily basis, except when he is away. This tenant has always been very violent & aggressive in his everyday behaviour, clearly a deeply-ingrained facet of his personality. Both he & his former Partner are well known to the Police & he appears to be on parole … he is loosely associated with the Mongrel Mob … but doesn’t appear to be an actual member.

Does Kainga Ora have no shame? How can they have let this continue for four years, when they could have stopped the intimidation after say the third or fourth event. They could have told the tenant that if he continues on, he will be evicted and not be allowed into a state house anywhere unless he behaves as a human being, not a thug.

In the very worst of the Major Explosions (and there have been 7 of these = out of 18), in the midst of his multi-hour intimidation, he has gone right along their fenceline, down to their letterbox & driveway, aggressively strutting back & forth straight outside their house, violently swearing & making loud threats – just the most blatant violent intimidation – interspersed with loud declarations of dominance / fighting prowess (essentially Maori Warrior-style ‘Proclaiming’) … and on 3 separate occasions he has actually rushed onto their front lawn in the middle of his explosion & vandalised their property (in one of the worst cases, for instance, smashing their concrete fence with a sledgehammer at 2am (in the midst of a very long explosion of intimidation throughout the early hours of the morning, that included violently assaulting his then girlfriend), followed by ripping my Parents’ letterbox off the fence & then throwing it onto their front lawn … all documented by Police).

I know Labour MPs read this blog. Do any of them really think a couple in their 90s should have to endure this?

Like I say, there’s One Hell of a lot more I want to say on this … including the ultimately dismissive Kainga Ora (& later Maori social housing provider) response to attempts by a range of concerned people to get this neighbour moved or evicted … 3 very good Policewomen (one of whom was a neighbour through 2018 & witnessed much of his violence), a social worker attached to my parents’ local medical centre specialising in the prevention of elder abuse, a nurse, various long-standing neighbours (who all gave evidence) & a few others.

My Parents are not only lifelong Labour voters but also long-term Party members with a long family history in the Labour Movement … they’ve been viciously betrayed by this Govt … having voted Left all my life, I swung into Non-Voting at the last Election.

There is a simple solution to this. Reverse the ban on evicting state house tenants who terrorise their neighbours and break the law. Stop prioritizing the rights of the criminals over the rights of the victims.

David Seymour released:

“The Government’s anti-science approach to Covid-19 testing means we’re unprepared for Omicron”, says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Amtech, a New Zealand medical product supplier, has been declined certification to import and distribute rapid antigen testing kits by the Ministry of Health.

“While Australia has approved 65 rapid antigen testing products, and is running out, New Zealand has just approved just four products.

“The Ministry says companies who would like to import and distribute RATs should conduct a ‘supplier independent evaluation’. That would take three to six months. It’s nuts that it would take so long to approve one in the middle of a pandemic.

“With a crunch in supply, why would we restrict ourselves like this?

“The Ministry should instead automatically approve for importation and distribution RATs which have been approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). That would bring down the price of RATs and make them more widely available for New Zealanders.

Couldn’t agree more. I’d love to be able to buy some RATs. Like many I suspect, I won’t get a nasal swab if I have some mild cold symptoms, because I’d spend half my life self-isolating at home waiting for results. But if I could purchase RATs, I’d happily test myself whenever I get mild cold symptoms, as I get a result within 15 minutes.

“Rako Science has the capacity to do 10,000 saliva tests a day on top of Asia Pacific’s 3,500. Instead of working with the private sector, the Government simply passed a law that said: ‘If we need it, we’ll just take it.’

“Pharmacists say New Zealanders are shocked to learn they can’t buy rapid antigen tests. The effective ban on purchasing RATs, while the Ministry of Health stockpiles millions of them, is inexplicable.

“The Government’s approach has been anti-science and tech-phobic. People who have tried to partner with it from the private sector have expressed immense frustration.

“New Zealanders have endured significant restrictions on their lives which could have been reduced by taking an innovative, tech-led approach to Covid-19.

Why won’t the Government trust us, and allow us to buy them?

Simon Bridges writes:

Most New Zealanders may not have heard of Joe Manchin. But 74-year-old Joe is a United States senator from West Virginia who has recently become one of the most important people in the world’s most powerful democracy.

The reason is that, in an evenly divided senate of 100, Manchin’s fellow Democrat, President Joe Biden, needs his support to pass the sweeping $2 trillion (yes, trillion) Build Back Better plan​.

Actually it is worse than that. The BBB plan will really cost closer to $5 trillion, or around $15,000 per US resident, if you ignore the accounting tricks.

Manchin, though, on the eve of Christmas, decided to vote against the bill. His view is that the US already has high inflation, that inflation is hurting workers and families in his state, and that all the spending in the proposal would simply fuel that inflation.

Currently, inflation in the US is 6.8 per cent​, the highest it has been since 1982​. In New Zealand, it isn’t that high, at 4.9 per cent, but again, if you take out one-off GST increases, it’s the highest we’ve seen it since the 1980s, and well above the global rate for 2021 of 3.5 per cent.

Yep inflation in NZ is at a 30 year high.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson has taken government spending up 40 per cent since National was in office, and has signalled a staggering $128 billion spendup this year, some 68 per cent higher. National accepts we needed to borrow and spend more at the height of the Covid crisis, and public spending is important for things like transport, health, education, and police.

But you can have too much of a good thing for too long, and the quality of the spending by Grant Robertson has been pretty loose. Now, in a tight economy, with supply chain and labour constraints, public spending is just competing with others for goods, services, and staff, and driving inflation higher.

The quality of much of the spending is abysmal, and every family pays for it through both inflation and increased debt.

Ben Thomas writes:

An under-reported legislative reform will, alongside the rising minimum age, drastically lower the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes on sale.

As a way of understanding how monstrous this anodyne-sounding proposal actually is, consider if the same proposal was floated for party drugs such as MDMA, which this Government recently legalised testing for at festivals and events. These drugs cause relatively few negative health consequences, but can be acutely dangerous when cut with impurities and unknown substances by dealers.

If the Ministry of Health suggested the solution to festival drug use was to intercept pills at testing stations and cut them with twice as much rat poison and chalk for users to ultimately ingest, it would be regarded as a psychopath with little regard for human life.

Yet the proposal will require addicts to inhale many more times the amount of deadly tar and burning ash – the elements of a cigarette which damage human health on an unprecedented level globally – and spend even more money, to get the same level of relatively harmless nicotine hit as before.

Yep, it is as crazy as it sounds.

The Herald reports:

New Zealanders stranded in Australia will miss out on booking a spot in MIQ as the next batch of rooms are released tomorrow.

A further 1,250 rooms will be available to book using the online lobby system for people returning to New Zealand in March and April.

The MIQ room release was previously scheduled for December 23 but it was cancelled and moved to Thursday following a government announcement that the length of stay would be extended to 10 days, with no self-isolation component, due to the threat of the Omicron variant.

It’s the first room release since December 16.

But with the Omicron variant delaying the Government’s plan to open a “self-isolation pathway from Australia”, it means citizens in Australia will not be permitted to book a room in an MIQ facility.

“Airlines do not currently have any red flights scheduled from Australia for March or April,” it said on the Manged Isolation and Quarantine website.

“For this reason, those travelling from Australia will not be able to participate in tomorrow’s room release.

Is it beyond the capability of the Government to synchronize flights and room availability? This isn’t rocket science.

The result is that all the Kiwis in Australia wanting to return home get screwed over again.

The Herald reports:

The decrease in smoking rates is larger than usual according to the latest Government health survey 2020/2021.

Smoking rates have decreased across all ethnic groups, and for Māori adults, it’s down by 6.4 per cent. In 2019/2020 28.7 per cent of Māori adults were smoking, that figure is now sitting at 22.3 per cent.

Director for ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) Deborah Hart says all the work that has been put into smoke-free initiatives is kicking in including plain packaging, and taxes on cigarettes, but that in itself is not enough.

“We now have the evidence that vaping is helping decrease smoking rates.”

Vaping rates in Aotearoa have increased by 3.5 per cent in 2020/2021. In 2015/2016, these rates sat at just 0.9 per cent Today, 6.2 per cent of adults are using e-cigarettes daily. A study carried out between ASH and the University of Auckland showed that while some young people are experimenting with vaping, the daily use of an e-cigarette is occurring overwhelmingly in existing smokers.

“What we’re seeing is people transition from very harmful cigarette smoking to a much less harmful product in e-cigarettes or vaping, and that’s been going on for a few years and we’re going to continue to see that I would think,” Hart said.

Good to see substitution happening. Vaping, as ASH says, is far less harmful than smoking.

Stuff reports:

Neighbours of a Kāinga Ora house frequented by gang members say they feel trapped in their homes and are sick of living in fear.

The property in Marlborough is rented by the state housing provider to a person associated with a gang that visits the property for parties and gatherings.

The Marlborough Express has decided not to identify the neighbours, the gang or the street, to protect the safety of the neighbours. They regularly deal with intimidation from patched gang members even just walking past the property.

But the residents say they felt compelled to speak publicly about their problems, having sought help from police and Kāinga Ora in the past year, but to no avail.

It is important people focus on who is responsible for this. It is deliberate Government policy introduced by Labour that no matter how much you terrorise your neighbours, you will never have your tenancy terminated. It is government policy that the rights of gang associates to give cheap taxpayer subsidised housing outweighs the rights of everyone else in the community.

The pensioner had woken one night to find a woman had broken into her lounge through her locked front door. The woman said she was looking for a smoke, and the pensioner gave her one and then asked her to leave, she said.

The pensioner said she slept with a knife, while another neighbour said he was considering getting a firearm for his own protection.

Labour is forcing them to live in fear like this. The obvious answer is to evict the tenants, but it goes against their ideology.

After complaining to Kāinga Ora, the pensioner said she was told the gang associates had to live somewhere, and suggested she consider moving instead.

This is the kind Government in action.

Kāinga Ora focused on housing New Zealanders based on their housing need, and did not discriminate against people with gang affiliations or criminal convictions, “who are equally part of the community with the right to a home”.

The problem with this statement is responsibilities should come with rights. But Kainga Ora no longer requires their tenants to do simple stuff such as not terrorise the neighbours, not operate criminal enterprises from their houses, nor damage the property etc etc

NewstalkZB reports:

A cosmetic surgeon from Belgium has been handed a 10-month prison sentence for a lecture in which he complained that women were no longer willing to give sexual favours in exchange for protection and money from men. …

In his 2019 speech at Ghent University, Hoeyberghs called women “hysterical, lazy, weak, stupid” and “dirty creatures, who seek money and protection from men to whom they owe sex”. 

Women served “to satisfy men sexually and perform household chores”, he said, but “don’t want to open their legs anymore”. 

Women could be compared to “animals” with “udders”, the surgeon told his postgraduate audience. 

Specific women, including students in the auditorium, a TV broadcaster, and green activist Greta Thunberg, were targeted with insults. 

Women were “worthless” in the role of doctors, judges, teachers, scientists, journalists, and business executives, Hoeyberghs said. …

Hoeyberghs, who qualified as a cosmetic surgeon in the UK and is a frequent TV commentator in Belgium, was invited to speak by the university.

Hoeyberghs is a pretty reprehensible person and what he said is incredibly offensive. God knows, why he was invited to speak.

But I don’t think he should be going to prison for what he said. The best thing people could do would be to ignore him, not jail him.

Stuff reports:

The Government has set aside $150 million for an Auckland harbour crossing for cyclists and to also cover sunk costs arising from last year’s abandoned cycling and walking bridge project.

In October, the Government scrapped a proposed $785m cycling and walking bridge in Auckland, just three months after unveiling it.

As of late September, Waka Kotahi had spent $51m on designs, consultants and engineering plan fees.

Now, the Government has agreed to direct $150m of the project’s original $785m budget to cover sunk costs and conduct further work to get a ferry or bus shuttle service up and running.

Isn’t the Government great at wasting huge amounts of money, and producing nothing for it.

Stuff reports:

The country’s state housing landlord admits it doesn’t keep records on damage done by tenants to its homes.

And while Kāinga Ora has charged tenants $35.3 million for property damage over the past five years, it can’t say how much has actually been paid back.

How incompetent do you have to be, to not even be able to know how much has actually been paid.

I suspect it is very little. Because it is taxpayer’s money, they have no incentive to collect it, or even monitor it.