23 October 2015 MEDIA STATEMENT

Bloated uber-Ministry continues spend up

MoBIE is living up to its acronym with bucket loads of taxpayer cash being spent on media monitoring and news tracking services, Labour’s State Services spokesperson Kris Faafoi says.

The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has become a bloated caricature of itself, wallowing in extravagance and having a whale of a time at the expense of taxpayers.

“We’ve had a $26,000 sundeck, $140,000 televisions and a $75,000 reception desk. Now we find almost $800,000 has been paid out over the last two-and-a-half years to two companies to monitor news clippings and radio and television transcripts.

“Media monitoring can be a useful tool and obviously government departments need to stay informed. However MoBIE has spent more than twice what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs forked out to monitor the same media sites and almost as much as the entire cost of news tracking across 18 government agencies in the eight months to March.

“Steven Joyce seems to have lost control of spending at his Ministry. Millions of dollars are being freely spent on TV screens, flash furniture, and expensive signage. At the same time staff are preparing to strike because Steven Joyce is ignoring their calls for fair pay increases,” Kris Faafoi says.

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