“Cut and Run” Phil Goff is unrepentant over nicking more than $30,000 of taxpayers money in order to fund his non-message bus tour. A minister in National resigned over inappropriate spending of just $70.00 showing far more integrity than “Cut and Run” Phil Goff. His sense of entitlement to dip into taxpayer funds to run his campaigns is repulsive
Labour’s “Axe the Tax” bus trip protesting GST increases is costing the taxpayer about $30,000 – but Labour leader Phil Goff has defended it as the cheapest way to get around the country on an issue that affects everybody.
The Labour Party has chartered the bus for a fortnight-long nationwide trip protesting against the Government’s proposal to increase GST to 15 per cent, with compensatory tax cuts that Labour claims will advantage high-income earners.
The bus features a red “skin” with Axe the Tax signage and Labour logos.
A spokesman for Mr Goff said the costs were expected to be about $30,000, including for the bus charter, the signage and other material such as signs and balloons.
He is a trougher extraordinaire. He is supping along with his party at the biggest trough there is, parliamentary funding. We can only trust “Cut and Run” Phil Goff for the figures too because all of the funding that he has availed himself of has been from a post of taxpayers gold beyond the reach of the Official Information Act. We have to trust a man known less for his honesty and more for his spinelessness, that the figures are accurate.
Not only that “Cut and Run” Goff suggests basically that if we don’t like the bus, well he could always have used his minsterial limousine.
The bus was the cheapest way to get around the country and to places that were not on main transport routes.
It would cost significantly more for him to use Crown cars to travel around in and for other MPs to use individual forms of transport. The signage was attention-grabbing and ensured people knew exactly what the MPs were there to talk about.
What a fuckwit! Not only he lies again. The bus may be attention seeking, at least he is honest about for a man desperately seeking relevance but to say that the trip ensured people knew exactly what they ere talking about is a straight out lie. They are most certainly not talking about Axing GST completely and it is they are also NOT talking about dropping GST, and most certainly they won’t be talking about removing the increase in GST should the unlikely occur and they win office at the next election, so it begs the obvious question. Just what are they talking about?
Well I can tell you that those figures are highly suspect. For a start to wrap a bus that big with a full wrap, which is what they have done would probably come in at more than $10,000. That is a third of his $30,000. The rental of the bus would presumably includes a driver because I doubt any Labour MP has the necessary Class 2 licence and P endorsement to drive the bus. Let’s assume that a driver is supplied and he drives the maximum legal hours he can including all break required by law and rest stops of 12 hours per day. Let’s also be generous and say that the driver is paid at the top end of usual bus driver rates at $16p/h. The wages bill alone for the driver is $2688.00, there would also need to be accommodation costs in there, so that adds another $1170 for the two weeks. Labour would never spring for a nice motel for the driver, they would save those rooms for themselves. We are now almost at half of the cost of “Cut and Run” Phil Goff’s $30,000.
We still not have seen how much the daily charter is, the RUC, and the diesel fuel. In a bus like that the fuels costs would be about $150 per day, but that may be light. Still at $150 per day that is the not inconsquential sum of $2100. Now we are definately over halfway on the costs.
I think it is high time that “Cut and Run” Phil Goff produced the receipts to justify his figure of $30,000. I would suggest he will refuse out right given his taking umbrage at the suggestion he is troughing at our expense. To refuse would merely confirm my hypothesis that he is obfuscating on the costs.
The Speaker too needs to start thinking very seriously about the opening up of parliamentary services to greater scrutiny by removing the restriction preventing the OIA being used to prevent the public who pay for this silliness from seeing just how much troughing is going on. If he doesn’t it can only be a matter of time before there is a whistle-blower that dumps heaps of info in the hands of a blogger.
