Right wing soy boi Ben Thomas makes a devastating critique of the right wing claims of tribal and racist nepotism…
Nanaia Mahuta has been scrupulous. She deserves better than a whitewash
Discussing the alleged conflicts, which mostly involve a range of contracts entered into between Ko Awatea, a consultancy run by Mahuta’s husband Gannin Ormsby, and various Crown agencies where Mahuta had (unrelated, associate) ministerial responsibilities, requires a few disclaimers. Online in particular, the issue has attracted appalling racism, unacceptable whatever the substance of the issues.
There is one example of a clear-cut breach of the Cabinet manual, which was identified by the ACT party to little attention. That is Mahuta’s appointment, during her term as Māori development minister, of Waimirirangi Ormsby, whom Mahuta’s husband identified as his niece, to the ill-fated technical advisory group reviewing New Zealand’s response to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The appointment carried a fee of around $44,000.
There is some grey area in terms of who counts as a “close family member” under the Cabinet manual, and familial terms like “uncle” can be used in a much looser way within Māoridom than may apply to the Western nuclear family unit, but self-identification by the minister’s family should suffice to make it an open and shut case. Mahuta should receive a warning, and apologise.
It seems unlikely the inquiry will find any inappropriate intervention by Mahuta in the other examples. The contracts, totalling about $200,000 across a variety of agencies over a couple of years, are for projects at a level far below ministerial notice. She was at no time the minister responsible for the areas in which contracts were awarded. The sheer number of layers through which a self-serving minister would have to wade in order to interfere in procurement makes it seem a remote prospect.
…Ben Thomas is a right wing commentator, his analysis is in stark contrast to the breathless panting by the Right who see Nanaia’a Whānau gaining these contracts as the end of Western Civilisation.
For the political Left (not middle class woke Identitarians) Nanaia Mahuta’s consultancies aren’t the issue, it’s Labour’s $1billion on them that is!
A Million dollars a day is spent on motels for vulnerable people causing enormous social carnage with no real wrap around support services present (as we saw on TVNZs Sunday) and 27 000 are on emergency waiting lists – we can’t solve those problems apparently but the Government can spend a billion dollars on consultants each year?
$1bn spend on consultants each year
“Labour’s spending on contractors and consultants has climbed to nearly $1bn a year, despite Labour coming to power suggesting that they would rein in this use of the private sector. Much of this is spent on the “Big Four” contractor firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst and Young.”
What the hell has happened to left wing transformative change?
Since becoming the Associate Minister for Housing, Maram Davidson has issued just eight press releases and introduced no new laws, if Labour are missing in action, where the hell are the Greens?
You can not spend a billion dollars a year on the professional managerial class in consulting while 150 499 children live in extreme poverty, while we hand out 100 000 food packages each month while our suicide rates soar.
You can’t spend a billion dollars a year on consultants while so many are in material hardship.
Jacinda’s neokindness isn’t enough, if you aren’t forcing the Wellington Bureaucratic Elite into radical reform, they play you and stymie your agenda.
Jacinda’s neo-kindness is a cautionary political failure of obscene proportions.
To paraphrase Tennessee Ernie Ford,
You work 16 hours, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Jacinda, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the the company store
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So Martyn. From memory the figure under Nationals time was something close to 700mil? That I think was using comparable definitions of contractors and consultants as they used to exclude something like 10 agencies. The figure is now something like 940mil.
Under a NAT Act government I will be very surprised if the figure plummets. National use to cap spend on headcount for public service so they had to go contractors. I guarantee they will cut ministries and then use third parties instead. “Business” minded types love consultants/contractors . Where do you think a lot of the 120mil on scam p testing went.
I don’t think anyone (other than the consultants) wants wasteful spend (and even that becomes opinionated) but some of the reporting makes it sound like this will all disappear under NAT/ ACT. History shows otherwise.
yes it would be good to do better than both the left and right wings of the uniparty
The lefties and woke championed the 1 million a day spent on hotels because they cancelled the working class landlords and private housing, championed the ‘swapping for free’ Kiwibuild land to be privatised, championed the largest mass immigration in the world of very low wages, low skills, high dependancy and put all their eggs in one basket that foreign and rich business builders, without strict zoning and planning rules would be better.
If they bothered to look at the UK they would already know, it wouldn’t work.
Not so worried about Nanaia Mahuta contracts which sound quite small, more worried about the billions spent of big 4 consultants everywhere championing the right wing agendas which their victims, the taxpayers, pay for.
Yes the money spent on consultants is one of the reasons I don’t support Labour. An outrageous amount of money. Just give it to the poor and cut out the middleman.
I do think there is something to answer for that Mahuta’s family have been given so many contracts. What are her husbands qualifications to run a suicide prevention workshop? Why in his contracting did he quote $2000 for Nainaia to talk on the workshop (o.k. someone in the govt didn’t allow that expenditure, but shouldn’t that have rang alarm bells?)
When 4 goverment departments hire the same family consultantancy firm using no bid contracts you gotta think they all know which way the winds blowing and who the need hire to know the correct agenda. Winston called it a gravy train.
Meanwhile McKinsey, EarnstYoung et al are on an accountants gravy train raking in millions and no doubt there are brothers, sisters, mates, of politicians, top civil servants and party cardres receiving contracts. How much of the $billion on consultants is no bid rather than contestable? How much is revolving door where a recently excivilservant gets the contract?
You would think that the politician could just hire a couple of very smart people into their departments to plan and implement the goverments policy – the one the party and the politicians came up with in a manifesto.
Still $1billion would only have built 2000 State Houses. But accumulating state assets would never be on a consultancy firms agenda.
” Mahuta’s consultancies aren’t the issue, it’s Labour’s $1billion on them that is”
Actually, it’s both in equal measure: Loss of control of state finances AND patently obvious corruption.
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