Don Brash, The Dream Is Over

From the Dom Post:

The controversial 2025 Task Force – which recommended slashing government spending – blew its entire three-year budget for chairman Don Brash's meeting fees in just one year.

Dr Brash was paid $1200 a day to chair the commission, and the Government expected to pay him for eight full days of meetings and preparation in 2009-10 and four days for the following two years.

But documents made public by Treasury show Dr Brash received $39,450 in the first year – four times the amount earmarked for his first year on the taskforce.

Other members, who were paid $1000 a day, received $34,000 – $2000 above the estimated budget for 10 meetings.

The task force came in under budget, however, because it did not spend as much as anticipated on outside experts – out of a $100,000 budget just $18,913 was spent.

Dr Brash said the cost of his fees reflected the fact that he was working "close to fulltime" on the 2025 report. "I certainly worked a lot more than 10 days ... working with the author, working through drafts etc." 

It would have been "utterly absurd" to expect the task force to complete its work in the four days set aside by the Government.

To be fair to Brash, the project was under budget as a whole, though the fact so little was spent on external experts is perhaps the most damning aspect of the entire story.

Brash's complaint that the budget estimate did not allow enough time for the work, has to be balanced with the fact that the entire report was poorly researched and simply regurgitated the neo-liberal thinking that has dominated National and Act policy for the last two decades. All Brash needed to do was find an electronic version of the Act Party manifesto and then cut-and-paste.

Really, how long would that have taken? Five minutes?

Still, this was a nice little earner for Brash, and he's done well out of blowing the chairman's budget. He may be a champion of fiscal restraint and the tightening of Government spending, but not so much when he's the recipient of the money.

Could it be that Don Brash has fallen victim to welfare dependency? That's the debilitating condition that the Right assures us affects anyone who receives Government money for doing nothing. They just end up demanding more money.

Maybe Brash needs a visit from Aunty Paula. She'll give him a kick up the bum.