Robertson's Stunning $3b Admission Shows Potential For Taxpayer Savings

"Grant Robertson now estimates that he can claw back $3 billion in funding allocated from the COVID response fund. That's a stunning admission of how he misdirected taxpayer money," says New Zealand Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke.

Robertson's admission was made in response to a question in Parliament yesterday.

"Spending announcements like $1.2 billion on 'Jobs for Nature' could hardly be considered pandemic responses. Instead, Robertson exploited a pandemic to create New Zealand's largest ever political slush fund."

"Now that a new COVID outbreak has put him under pressure over his dwindling fund, he's suggesting he can reclaim around $1600 for every household in the country from his previously-allocated spending. That's an incredible sum. If he can find this much money just by looking between the couch cushions, that suggests far more taxpayer money could be reclaimed if he does a deep clean."

"We're calling on the Finance Minister to go further. In fact, we're offering to go through his funding allocations line by line to identify areas where money should be reclaimed for more vital initiatives."

"If Grant Robertson doesn't do a thorough job clawing back low-priority spending, he's signalled he's willing to simply borrow to cover new costs. His justification is that thanks to better-than-expected economic performance we can keep borrowing while staying within debt forecasts. But the forecasts are disastrous, showing a Debt Monster of around $100,000 per household by 2024. Why on Earth would we treat that like a target?"

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