A good year for the union

Louis Holbrooke from the Taxpayers’ Union writes about the year:

• The Government froze pay for high-earning public servants after months of petitioning and lobbying from our supporters. (They’re set to review this decision next year: we’ll be ready.)
• We successfully lobbied the Labour Party’s trade union to repay their wage subsidies.
• Our petition and billboard campaign protesting Auckland’s $785 million bike bridge saw the project scrapped.
• We attracted extraordinary media interest and public outrage over our investigation into DOC’s absurd funeral and burial of a dead turtle.
• We exposed examples of absurd and wasteful “COVID response” spending from Creative NZ, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and the “Public Interest Journalism Fund“.
• We alerted the public to how the Government is using taxpayer money to fund anti-dairy propaganda, dodgy health ‘research’, and left-wing blog sites.
• Our Jonesie Awards celebrating the worst exampels of government waste were a great success, racking up tens of thousands of view on Facebook and Youtube.
• Half the 15,000 submissions made to the Climate Change Commission on its big emissions plan came from Taxpayers’ Union supporters.
• The Taxpayer Talk podcast is now one of New Zealand’s most-listened political podcasts. We even got Nanaia Mahuta to front up for an interview on Three Waters.
• Taxpayers’ Union supporters like you chipped into an ad campaign that ensured practically everyone in the country knows how the Government gave $2.75 million to Mongrel Mob affiliates.
• Our bumper stickers to stop Labour’s car tax are now a regular sight up and down the country.
• And our Stop Three Waters campaign has seen 85,000 New Zealanders and 60 local councils unite against Nanaia Muhata’s asset grab, spooking Cabinet to the point where they forced Nanaia Mahuta to delay the introduction of legislation until (at least) March next year.