Posts by Russell Brown
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This is quite funny.
David Farrar has dutifully tried to gin up this one as WINZ Conference Mk II ... but several of his readers report that they've been to the lodge and it is not particularly flash as these things go.
Which makes the Herald's story even more absurd.
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It is mainly in the public sector these sort of faddish bonding sessions still happening – most corporates got bored with them in 90’s
Excepting, presumably, Fonterra, Telecom, Aventis, ANZ, Solar Turbines, Tertra Pak and Toyota, who all choose the same five-star luxury lodge in Taupo as the "APN team" does.
Tane at The Standard got some costings. Conclusion? HNZC couldn't have got even a basic hotel and venue much cheaper than they got the lodge.
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Indeed, Russell. Even better, why don't we just do away with oral or written questions, repeal the Official Information Act and then do a front page rant about how fraking lazy and thoroughly useless MPs like Heatley are?
I didn't say that. It would be as silly as pretending you're going to ban staff at crown entities from having national meetings.
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I mean, is the head of the IRD buying you a drink going to help persuade you to send more business their way?
I wouldn't say no!
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Housing NZ do a lot of video conferencing, their 3 National Offices are (were 3 years ago anyway) set up for it & it gets used routinely & widely.
HNZC are by no means a profligate organisation - there's very little racking up of entertainment on corporate credit cards. Very little entertainment in fact.
I'm always amazed by how tight a leash even relatively senior public servants are on with respect to entertainment expenses. If I'm out of town on business, I can charge food and drink to the extent that IRD will tolerate it. I've been with public servants who can't even buy a drink.
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The real story here is that this type of pointless beat up always ends up costing the taxpayer more - communications advisors, all-conferences-in-Wellington from now on, the meeting / enquiry that will inevitably be called on the topic... <sigh>
Quite. Last year, HNZC helped answer 577 Parliamentary questions, many of which will have been exquisitely political in nature. The total cost of ministerial support (including questions and OIA requests) was $2.46 million -- $165,000 over the budget, which was duly increased for the current financial year.
Some wag might wish to tot up the total cost of Phil Heatley's questions for the year.
Here's the Heatley press release everyone got their stories from, BTW.
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To put this in context:
According to its last annual report, HNZC manages a portfolio of more than 200,000 properties worth more than $15 billion.
Last year, it banked an operating surplus of $13 million. A more robust story could have asked why that was, and whether the cash could have been spent on accelerating property upgrades.
But that story wouldn't have come served up on a plate. It might, indeed, have required some work.
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On (academic) hoodies to be scared of, Dr Lockwood Smith is taking advice from Dr Greg Clydesdale.
Wow. Given the rate at which everyone else is getting the hell clear of Clydesdale, that is unfortunate.
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There's a cure for cancer?
If newspaper editors would only work for free, there'd be a cure tomorrow.
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Agree Russell this is a beat up. That is in no way excessive for a conference for ~100 people
Cheap shot at APN though, they can do what they like with their money, it's not mine.
Of course. But there's an undeniable irony in APN's flagship paper affecting a blue fit about a conference at a "luxury Taupo lodge" when its own "team" meets annually at an even more luxurious Taupo lodge.
Why, I'll bet the budget for the APN retreat would have funded another journalist to speak truth to power for a whole year ...
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