Government procurement practices should not be skewed towards political targets, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union in response to new calls for indigenous procurement policies.

Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Government procurement should be focused solely on delivering value for taxpayers. That means procuring the company that is best equipped to deliver a given service at a competitive price.”

“The Government is already undermining this principle with a five percent target for contracts awarded to businesses that can present themselves as Māori-owned or Pasifika-owned. Now the company that verifies these businesses wants the Government to increase its spending target for these companies.”

“This is a disturbing creep in the mission of procurement that will inevitably see less competitive tenders. That means either higher costs for taxpayers, lower-quality services, or both. It’s also incredibly unfair for those businesses – many of which employ Māori – that will miss out on contracts purely because they couldn’t tick the right diversity boxes.”
 

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