A Scandal A Week

It's Hard to Keep Up

How on earth does it come to pass that a Ministry of the Crown could fund the purchase of pine tree seedlings to plant in a block of unsuitable land?  Did no-one actually go an inspect the land before the seedlings were purchased.  Yup--apparently that is the case.  

The pine tree seedlings had to be dumped--wasting $400,000 of tax payers hard earned money.  But, what's a few exuberant exaggerations, eh, when your heart's in the right place and stupid taxpayers are funding your mistakes with no questions asked. 

Forestry officials working on the Government's flagship One Billion Trees plan ordered more than one million pine seedlings for a block of land so choked with scrub and weeds planting couldn't go ahead.  Forestry Minister Shane Jones told the Herald "ambition" and "enthusiasm" had a part to play in planting delays which struck the $32 million inaugural joint venture on the Far North forestry block.

Official documents show the Government planned to plant 1100ha with pine this year and had ordered about 1,100,000 seedlings for that.  The number of seedlings able to be planted collapsed to 191,000 as the condition of the land was revealed.   The Ministry for Primary Industries has yet to put a dollar figure on the cost to taxpayers, but market rates for seedlings put the cost of the order at about $400,000.  [NZ Herald]

Now, we shouldn't get the idea that Minister Jones was in an awful hurry and that no-one around him knew that the land was unsuitable to plant in pine tree seedlings.  He had plenty of time to organize a special "planting trowel" engraved with his name for the celebration when the project kicked off.  It was a great photo-op.
 

But this is only one scandal.  At least one a week is hitting the headlines now.   Here is columnist, Mike Hoskings take:

In the political game, they call it optics: the way things look.  At the moment, the government's optics stink. They are running the very real risk of being bogged down in a semi-permanent circus that rivals pantomime.

You're not really sure whether to laugh or cry. We have the Sroubek drama, which is refusing to go away, and looks increasingly disastrous both for the government, their governance, and the Minister and his performance.

Then we have the 1.1 million trees fiasco in which we have an almost comedic scenario whereby we bought the trees, but no one asked about the suitability of the land.  Then we have the really calamitous Kiwibuild, which has now not only been shown to be a scam, but a potentially multi-billion dollar sale in which the shop is full of houses and the sale sign is out, but there are no punters.

Add all those things together and you have an ongoing political picture of a government that looks inept, out of its depth, and inexperienced. . . .  This government has very little if any political capital. It's too soon and they haven't done much of real substance. Announcing hundreds of inquiries isn't doing stuff, it's just creating jobs for mates. 

.  . . . We have questions that need correcting, Ministers sacked for ineptitude and violence, almost a million trees gone, a crook given residency with no explanation after not even an hour was given to the decision (and a full report not read), and ideology around a housing ideal that is teetering, as barely 300 people turn up to buy them.

These things, cumulatively, stick. If not dealt to, they can sink you.  We all like to think we are run by, surrounded by, and deal with people of a half decent disposition and talent. When we are not we are embarrassed, we get frustrated and eventually angry.  That is where we are at right now.

We are not too far away from being labelled a Banana Republic.