Kate Hawkesby: Taxpayers deserve better than this wasteful spending

You’ve got to think there’s something very rotten in the state of the public service in this country that they’re carrying on —in some quarters where they know full well they’re getting cancelled— that they’re carrying on hiring people, working on projects, spending money, commissioning work.   Why? They’re not going anywhere. Three Waters, light rail, Let’s get Wellington Moving... why are people on these projects persevering when they must know it’s over? They’re gone, surely the spending stops. It’s reckless and wasteful, and smacks of a deluded sense of entitlement that they can carry on in the false belief —or maybe just arrogance— that wasting taxpayers' money on contracts and outlay trumps the reality, which is they’re toast.   Give it up. Stop already. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on things that will be completely irrelevant and non-existent. There is a guy, as we know from yesterday, at Three Waters hiring people. What a waste of time and money.   This is another problem with delayed special vote counting and a delayed formation of a government of course. It all takes too long. I was heartened to hear even PM in waiting Chris Luxon saying the process needs to be sped up. The electoral commission —under the previous government— actually extended the special vote count period if you can believe it. To account for those enrolling on the day, they added another week.   Madness. So now we wait this crazy three weeks whereby belligerent public service operators carry on with their head in the sand spending money on stuff going nowhere. If the new government had been able to get their feet under the desk sooner, all this would have been stopped by now and the country would not still be haemorrhaging cash on go nowhere projects. People like the Three Waters man would be stopped in their tracks.   Luxon said people should have been able to read between the lines by now and those projects stopped. Full stop. Those resources and that money needs to go to other things, he said. He’s incredibly frustrated with the time delay and people like that guy abusing it by hiring and carrying on, wasting our money, says everything you need to know about how the previous government operated and why they lost our trust.   Luxon said they can’t stop these projects themselves until they’re officially a government, but he did say he’d have hoped people would read the room and stop. Mark Mitchell said it’s a complete disrespect of taxpayers' money and I agree with that.   So how much responsibility should the caretaker government have in all this? Should they be putting this stuff on ice? Why are they allowing a spend up free for all on stuff the incoming government will axe? Megan Woods agreed it seems wasteful but said they’re in caretaker mode. Is that a good enough excuse? She said it’s up to the incoming government to disestablish any programmes, she said it’s not a perfect world but it’s the way it is.   It just feels to me that while all the excuses and hot air is getting bandied about, yet more money’s being spent, or should I say wasted. And I think we as taxpayers deserve better.   Hopefully a change in direction and a shift in priorities with this new government will refresh outdated attitudes within the public service, and this nose-in-the-trough-to-the-bitter-end mentality, will stop. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.