The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal through an Official
Information Act request that the Ministry for the
Environment has handed out $3,839,094 (exc. GST) to
environmental NGOs over the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial
years—without a single report measuring its
effectiveness.
Amongst the big winners are the
Environmental Defence Society ($377,743) and Forest &
Bird ($200,000)—groups that have spent the last two years
attacking the Government’s policies in court and the
media.
Taxpayers’ Union Investigations Coordinator
Rhys Hurley said: “This isn’t environmental
protection—it’s a taxpayer-funded activist slush
fund.”
“Kiwis don’t fork out their hard-earned
money so lobbyists can live off taxpayer handouts. If these
groups have real public support, they should stand on their
own two feet.”
“The Minister has put a
stop to some of this funding—but the real problem is MfE
itself. It’s ballooned from 360 staff in 2017 to 939
today. Clearly, they’ve got far too much time and money on
their hands.”
“These activist
handouts are just the tip of the iceberg. Nicola Willis
needs to take an axe to MfE’s funding in the May Budget
and slash this bloated bureaucracy back to
size.”
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