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January 14, 2008 6:23am by David Farrar

The quarter million toilet

DOC has somehow managed to spend $245,000 on a toilet block. Incredible.

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Policy Parrot

I’m suprised the FSC hasn’t endorsed them considering its penchant for wasting money on silly projects.

[DPF: Off topic 10 demerits]
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January 14, 2008 6:34am
Brian Smaller

$245K for a dunny? Holy Shit!
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January 14, 2008 7:12am
Lee C

Relax taxpayer, it’s just a long drop in the ocean…..
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January 14, 2008 7:23am
Danyl Mclauchlan

Question for the day: could you train a monkey to rewrite and publish National Party press releases? Followup: if the Herald did so would anybody notice?

[DPF: To be fair it is the slow news season]
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January 14, 2008 7:54am
Wycroft

I wonder whether it was also DoC, or just the Thames Coromandel District Council, which saw fit to remove a stunning, ancient pohutukawa from beside the wharf at Whangapoua Harbour to make way for a public loo? The dunny could have gone anywhere but in someone’s wisdom the tree had to go.
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January 14, 2008 8:37am
Lee C

Yes we are caught between two stools on this one.
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January 14, 2008 8:38am
Danyl Mclauchlan

<i>DPF: To be fair it is the slow news season</i>

Does that mean Claire Trevitt gets 20 demerits and a $50 dollar fine if she calls DOC and asks them for comment? Come on.

[DPF: I agree seeking comment should happen. Possibly it did]
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January 14, 2008 8:41am
RossK

The amazing thing here is that they could probably have put in a cheaper toilet, invested the balance, and used the interest to pay someone perpetually to clean and service the toilet.

This sort of financial waste just makes our leaders seem detached from reality.
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January 14, 2008 8:43am
uk_kiwi

I bet the contractors added 50% because it’s a government job. Usual story.

It also depends on what the expected lifespan of the block is- if it’s going to last for decades then it probably represents good value for money.
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January 14, 2008 9:46am
Murray

Whaat are they doing, gold plating the turds?

I thought we only did that cabinet ministers.
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January 14, 2008 10:00am
gd

Yet another example of what happens when you let idiots spend OPM ( other peoples money)
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January 14, 2008 10:49am
vto

new public dunnies around the country seem to always need to be flashy and architectural. Why, I am not quite sure. imho it is an excessive use of ratepayers money.

Especially when they are usually just as disgusting, tagged, crap-ridden and unappealing inside the cubicles as the old concrete block numbers.

pooooooo!
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January 14, 2008 10:53am
brucehoult

Hopefully it won’t fall into the gully then.
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January 14, 2008 11:34am
RRM

Always the quick conclusions. How many square metres is the toilet block? I.e. what did it cost as a square metre rate? Surely it’s hard to say “$245,000 is too much for a building” unless you know the size of the building?

Also Kerr Bay on Rotoiti is a stunning natural area, one of those places that sets New Zealand apart from anywhere else. Perhaps it was worth paying $20,000 for an architect to make sure it didn’t look like a concrete block bunker?

(More would have been spent on the Consultants who dreamed up the logos for Jenny Shipley’s Crown Health Enterprises…)
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January 14, 2008 12:31pm
Owen McShane

You have to spend money if you want to keep demanding taxpayer funding.
Here is the real question.
If half a dozen of us controlled half of New Zealand’s land area (either as Conservation Estate or through designated land under the RMA) and given that most of New Zealand’s mineral wealth is under your control along with the best tourism areas and so on, would we need $300,000 a year from the Government or would we be paying taxes out of our earnings? (And after paying for all the real conservation actions required.)
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January 14, 2008 2:18pm
Harpoon

Does anyone know details of any of the following, which are likely to have a bearing on the cost?:
— remoteness
— environment
— Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes national park is at about 1000 metres above sea level — that means it gets pretty cold there. If the bogs need to be usable 24/7/, 365 days a year, then wouldn’t there be insulation and heating requirements to stop the water freezing?
— size of building
— necessary security measures
— whether another building had to be demolished as part of the construction project
— note the new bog serves the nearby campsite, carparking and tourism facilities (www.nzine.co.nz/life/rotoiti.html), so why do people think the bogs should be some sort of stinky skanky long-drop when it’s to serve tourists?
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January 14, 2008 3:28pm
RRM

Yes but realistically they’re never going to turn the whole conservation estate over to private enterprise to do with as they see fit, so I don’t understand the relevance of the question.

(Thank god – imagine a wilderness like Rotoiti with a giant neon Novotel or something up at the head of the bay! Or perhaps I’m mistaken to assume all New Zealanders would be horrified by this?)
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January 14, 2008 5:21pm
duncan_bayne

My wife is currently training as a helicopter pilot, so I know how much it can cost to transport stuff by helicopter. If the toilet block is somewhere only accessible by air, I can see how it could easily become very expensive to build.

Question is: where was the cost-benefit analysis?
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January 14, 2008 7:32pm
John Dalley

Nice to see Nick Smith is being short with the truth on this little beat up.
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January 14, 2008 7:47pm
Oliver

Total waste of money, even as a public servant I don;t trust the current lot to spend my money properly.
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January 15, 2008 12:17am
Redbaiter

“Question is: where was the cost-benefit analysis?”

In the mind of the socialist, no such animal ever existed. If they ever did a cost benefit analysis of their ideology, they’d give us almost every dollar of our taxes back, not just the modicum wasted on this exercise.
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January 15, 2008 12:42am
yesom

The toilet block actually contains showers and a laundry facility for the camping ground next door.It is not grand at all.Its just well designed and functional.Lake Rotoiti is a regular stopping off point for buses heading down the West Coast so having 3 male and 3 female toilets is sensible when you have 60 people arriving at once.having a concrete floor is just common sense in a high rainfall area.
Its not really a big issue.
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January 15, 2008 1:17pm
Nigel

Seems to me if National want to be Government they should avoid doing ACT style attacks, it’s this sort of thing which makes me wonder if they are actually fit to govern.
It’s entirely possible to much was spent on the block, but short of screaming headlines there appears no genuine analysis by Smith on the rational behind the costings & given the importance of tourism & our “Clean Green” image to New Zealand, one would like to think Smith would be a little more careful before going publicity grabbing.
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January 15, 2008 2:11pm

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