The New Zealand Taxpayers Union can reveal through an Official Information Act request that the new Ministry of Regulation could be paying their Establishment Unit senior managers up to $257,941 each. This follows earlier reporting that the average salary at the organisation was $54,834 more than the average across the Public Service.

Commenting on this, Taxpayers’ Union Policy and Public Affairs Manager James Ross commented:

“When the Government’s bureaucracy-slashing department starts turning into a bloated bureaucracy itself, questions have to be asked about this Government’s commitment to cost-saving.”

“The three Establishment Unit Senior Managers are taking home up to $258k each - which would be well over three times the median wage. At a time when Kiwis’ standards of living are plummeting in real terms at a rate of knots, the irony of these new cost-saving positions being paid somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of a million dollars a year each won’t be lost.”

“Every story about the Ministry of Regulation seems to be about staffing cost blow-outs. The red tape slashing Ministry needs teeth, sure, but all we seem to hear about are teething problems.”

Notes:

The response to our Official Information Act request can be found here. https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/mfr_260k

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is an independent and membership-driven activist group, dedicated to being the voice for Kiwi taxpayers in the corridors of power. Its mission, lower taxes, less waste, more accountability, is supported by 200,000 subscribed members and supporters.

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