Govt raids MFAT to pay for RWC botch-up

Murray McCully’s decision to raid $6 million from Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade to pay for the government’s botched handling of the Rugby World Cup fan zone shows a perverse sense of priorities, says Labour’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Phil Goff.

“The Government’s decision was revealed, hidden under Vote Economic Development in the Supplementary Estimates budget document.

“It notes the transfer of $6 million from Vote Foreign Affairs to ‘assist with the additional costs arising from the extension of Queen’s Wharf fan zone’.1 This occurred because Murray McCully happened to be Minister for the Rugby World Cup as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“National has secretly taken money out of Foreign Affairs to pay for their poor planning of opening night at the Rugby World Cup.

“How does it make those hardworking Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff feel about this Government’s priorities when they’ve been made redundant because it supposedly can’t afford their salaries yet it can find money from their budget for a fan zone?

“The Rugby World Cup was a great event for New Zealand but John Key and Murray McCully’s idea to have everyone come down to Queen’s Wharf ‘party central’ to celebrate the opening was deeply flawed. The facility simply couldn’t cope.

“Now it seems that money from the MFAT budget was freely available to pay to fix up the Government’s mistake but it isn’t available for the on-going essential work of promoting and protecting New Zealand’s interests internationally, resulting in 79 job losses.

“The total budget for Foreign Affairs for Guest of Government status for VIPs attending the RWC was a grossly inflated $9.995 million.2 Two-thirds of that wasn’t spent which is just as well. Who really thinks that spending nearly $10 million on dignitaries to watch rugby should have been priority spending for Foreign Affairs.?

“Times are tight financially which requires prudent spending by any government. What all of this shows however is that National has the wrong sense of priorities in terms of what it should spend its MFAT budget on,” said Phil Goff.

1 The Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations the year ending 30 June 2012 (B.7) page 250

2 The Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations the year ending 30 June 2012 (B.7) page 404