Revealed: $218,000 Reo App Free-For-All Across Government
Taxpayers' Union Investigations Coordinator, Rhys Hurley, said:
'We've got a Māori Language Commission, we've got staff training programmes, we've got online learning tools - so why is every agency now building its own apps?'
'This is a perfect example of bureaucratic duplication. Every department wants its own badge, its own brand, its own slice of the cultural competency pie, all funded by the public purse.'
'Some of these apps cost more than $35,000 and reached fewer than 2,000 people. Waikato Regional Council knew other apps already existed before building its own. That's not helping Māori, it's just self-indulgence.'
"With this many apps found via tips alone, imagine how many more exist. A centralised, shared platform for the public service instead of this wasteful agency-by-agency approach is needed."
"We don't need seven apps, we just need one that works."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
Te Pāti Māori, Greens outraged at 'marginalising' passport changes
Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Te Pāti Māori says the government's changes to passports are an attempt to whitewash the national identity. The government confirmed on Friday New Zealand's passport is being redesigned to place the English words above the te reo Māori text. The new look won't start being rolled out until the end of 2027. Since 2021, passports have had "Uruwhenua Aotearoa" printed in silver directly above New Zealand Passport. Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden said the positioning of text on passports will change to reflect the government's commitment to using English first. She said the redesign - which would be unveiled later this year - was being done as part of a scheduled security upgrade, ensuring no additional cost to passport-holders. Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the change diminishes the visibility of tangata whenua. "Our passport is not just a travel document, it's a statement of who we are as a nation. So, the stripping down of te reo Māori, or marginalising our indigenous identity, reflects this government's sad obsession with erasing Te Tiriti o Waitangi and dragging us back to a monocultural past," she said. Ngarewa-Packer said the move undermined Aotearoa's reputation as a leading nation in recognising indigenous rights. "Restoring our reo took a long time. I mean imagine doing this in Ireland, imagine doing this to the Welsh. This was hard fought for. It's not re-ordering of words, the reformatting is deliberately done to undermine the mana [and] to sideline us tangata whenua." Benjamin Doyle Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Green Party MP Benjamin Doyle said the move is not what New Zealanders need from the government. "We are seeing day by day, the rights and dignities of minority communities being stripped away while they leave the majority of New Zealanders suffering under the government's current decisions," Doyle said. "This is not a positive vision for Aotearoa, this is not a positive step towards unifying kotahitanga and it's not benefiting anyone. Really, its just dog-whistling politics. It's the tail wagging the dog." The ACT Party celebrated van Velden's move on social media, saying the change would "restore English before te reo Māori - without costing taxpayers". The change comes as part of a deliberate push by the coalition to give English primacy over te reo Māori in official communications. New Zealand First's coalition agreement with National stipulates that public service departments have their primary name in English and be required to communicate "primarily in English" except for entities specifically related to Māori. It also includes an as-yet-unfulfilled commitment to make English an official language of New Zealand.
NZ Herald
5 hours ago
- NZ Herald
The rates crisis – a canny view for New Zealand: Nick Stewart
Council rates increased 12.2% annually.¹ The Taxpayers' Union documents cumulative rate increases of 34.52% over three years whilst inflation totalled just 13.7%. This is systematic wealth confiscation by people who face no market discipline for their decisions, and the Hastings District Council provides a fine example of the melee ahead. Yet, Hastings is simply one example among many bad apples across NZ. Rate increases, or daylight robbery? In Hastings, ratepayers who budgeted for normal 3-4% increases got hammered with 19% in 2024-25, followed by 15% in 2025-26. That's a compound 37% increase over two years for Hastings ratepayers. An average Hastings family paying $3000 in rates now face $4300 annually – that's $1300 extracted from household budgets that could have funded children's education or emergency savings. The timing makes this especially vicious. Right as petrol prices fell 8% – providing families with a glimmer of relief – councils threw on rate increases that more than wiped out these savings. It's almost as if they calculated how much breathing room households gained … then took it. Hastings has projected debt rising from $400 million to $700m by 2030. We're witnessing a council that has grown beyond what its ratepayer base can sustain. The rider has become heavier than the horse, which spells eventual capitulation. Every private business understands that customers have a finite capacity to pay. Exceed that capacity and customers disappear. Councils operate under no such constraint. They simply send bigger bills to ratepayers who can't escape. Like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm, today's councillors have forgotten they're supposed to serve ratepayers – not rule them. While private-sector businesses slash costs and implement redundancies to survive, councils expand their fiefdoms with impunity. The contrast couldn't be starker. Business managers whose jobs depend on efficiency face market discipline daily. Councillors face elections every three years, where complex budget decisions get reduced to campaign slogans. Meanwhile, they enjoy inflation-plus salary increases and gold-plated job security while imposing austerity on the very ratepayers who fund them. Richardson's Democratic Solution Ruth Richardson captures the fundamental problem: councils have become 'arrogant', 'unaccountable', and 'wasteful' and 'have got to be brought to heel'. Her proposed solution cuts through the bureaucratic nonsense: cap rate increases at inflation unless ratepayers approve higher amounts through binding referenda. This isn't radical – it's basic democratic consent for taxation. An inflation cap would restore planning certainty overnight whilst forcing councils to choose between genuine necessities and bureaucratic empire-building. Critics claim this assumes ratepayers lack perfect information about 'complex' infrastructure trade-offs, but that misses the point entirely. The current system assumes councils have perfect information about ratepayers' financial capacity – an assumption that Hastings' compound 37% increase rudely disproves. When families face financial warfare dressed up as fiscal responsibility, the 'complexity' argument becomes irrelevant. Hastings, the bellwether? The upcoming Hastings mayoral election represents more than political choice – it's an opportunity for forensic examination of fiscal responsibility: every council vote recorded, every budget decision documented, and no way for candidates to escape their fiscal DNA through clever spin and newfound fiscal enlightenment. Some councillors already express concern about 'diminishing borrowing capacity' – a tacit admission that current spending is unsustainable. When the reality finally penetrates the bureaucratic bubble, it's too late for the ratepayers. This same dynamic is playing out from Auckland to Invercargill. Yes, New Zealand faces genuine infrastructure challenges. Ageing water systems, earthquake strengthening, and climate adaptation create real costs. But this reality has become the perfect smokescreen for herculean spending growth. The question isn't whether infrastructure needs exist. The infrastructure bill was always coming due. It's whether councils have used it to justify spending that extends far beyond pipes and roads – into glamour projects, consultant fees and bureaucratic expansion. Again – when the rider becomes heavier than the horse, the system collapses regardless of how noble the rider's intentions. Why can't RBNZ just drive rates down? The Reserve Bank faces an impossible choice. It cannot provide the interest rate relief the rest of us desperately need whilst councils pump 13% of total inflation into the economy. We all need to row the boat and play our part – including the public sector. A dollar is a dollar, whether it comes from a rates bill or a grocery receipt. When councils exempt themselves from inflation discipline, they force the RBNZ to keep interest rates higher for longer – crushing mortgage holders and businesses who had no say in council spending decisions. Every responsible household and business starts the year with careful financial planning. These assume government costs increase roughly in line with inflation – a reasonable expectation in a functioning democracy. The problem lies in the fact that our councils have abandoned this social contract. When rates contribute 13% of national inflation whilst representing a fraction of household spending, councils have become the primary destroyer of private planning. Families who budget carefully find their fiscal discipline rendered meaningless by public sector excess they cannot control or escape. Voters, now's your chance … Real reform requires acknowledging that councils have become the enemy of household financial stability. October's elections offer a chance to demand proven fiscal discipline, not conversion stories. The question isn't whether New Zealand can afford fiscal responsibility – it's whether families and businesses can survive another term of public sector excess. The arithmetic doesn't lie. It simply raises the question of whether voters will finally hold councils accountable for the mathematical reality they've created.
1News
20 hours ago
- 1News
NZ passport redesign to have English words above te reo Māori
New Zealand's passport is being redesigned to place the English words above the te reo Māori text — with the new look being rolled out atl the end of 2027. Since 2021, newly issued passports have had the words "Uruwhenua Aotearoa" printed in silver directly above "New Zealand Passport". Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden today confirmed the positions of the text would be swapped in future to reflect the coalition's commitment to using English first "as it is the language most widely spoken by the New Zealand public". She said the redesign – which would be unveiled later this year – was being done as part of a scheduled security upgrade, ensuring no additional cost to passport-holders. Passports with the new design would start being issued only after the existing stock of booklets had been used up. ADVERTISEMENT A spokesperson for Internal Affairs told RNZ the department was working towards an "end-of-2027 release date" for the updated passport. The ACT Party celebrated van Velden's move on social media, saying the change would "restore English before te reo Māori – without costing taxpayers". The Department of Internal Affairs, in 2021, promoted the passport's existing "unique design" as one to "be proud of" and highlighted the more prominent use of te reo Māori both on the cover and throughout the book. The change came as part of a deliberate push by the coalition to give English primacy over te reo Māori in official communications. New Zealand First's coalition agreement with National stipulated that public service departments had their primary name in English and be required to communicate "primarily in English" except for entities specifically related to Māori. It also included an as-yet-unfulfilled commitment to make English an official language of New Zealand. On Wednesday, NZ First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters objected to the Green Party's use of the term "Aotearoa New Zealand" during Parliament's Question Time. ADVERTISEMENT "No such country exists," Peters said. "The name of this country in all the documents, and the membership of the United Nations, is New Zealand. "We are not going to have somebody unilaterally – without consultation, without consulting the New Zealand people – change this country's name." Speaker Gerry Brownlee insisted Peters respond to the question in a "reasonable fashion" and pointed to his ruling earlier this year that it was not inappropriate for MPs to refer to "Aotearoa New Zealand". "The New Zealand Geographic Board also recognises and uses the term 'Aotearoa New Zealand'," Brownlee told MPs. "It would be utterly ridiculous for this House to ban such use if the Geographic Board itself is using that." Returning to the issue yesterday, Peters requested Brownlee reconsider on the basis that the Geographic Board had no jurisdiction to alter the country's name. But Brownlee was unmoved. ADVERTISEMENT He noted that the word "Aotearoa" was regularly used as a name of the country, including on New Zealand passports, which he said Peters would be familiar with — given his role as Minister of Foreign Affairs. "He would have – over some five years or more – presented the New Zealand passport at various passport stations around the world and never questioned the fact that our passport has the word Aotearoa on the front of it," Brownlee said. "I'd further say that through all of those years ... there has been not a syllable, not a sound, not a mutter, not a murmur, no condemnation whatsoever from a government he was part of. "That is the end of the matter."
