Even the Auditor-General gave up

Some people think waste in the public sector is just the odd conference at a resort hotel. But the big ticket items are the massive cost blowouts on projects, with Corrections and Defence being the worst offenders.

Bernard Hickey blogs on this:

Late last week the Auditor General Kevin Brady reported back to the public that he had abandoned an investigation into why the cost of the Ministry of Defence’s NZ$2.2 billion programme for buying new ships and helicopters and upgrading planes had blown out by NZ$392.6 million.

He abandoned the investigation because the Ministry’s financial reporting systems were so poor that he couldn’t tell exactly why the costs had blown out.

This should indeed be a major story.