Responding to the Provincial Growth Fund’s $10m spend on Pasifika churches, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says:

“This kind of hyper-targeted spending can only be read as vote-buying. With a growing Debt Monster, now is not the time to fork out millions for church renos.”

“At least previous Provincial Growth Fund recipients have been taxpaying businesses. Churches, however, don’t pay taxes.”

“This is technically a business-as-usual Government announcement but it reads like pure election politics. In the week that postal voting opens for the election, this is the Government exploiting taxpayer money for the sake of its re-election campaign.”

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