Auditor-General on cost of living payment fiasco

The Auditor-General writes:

As Controller and Auditor-General, I assess whether public spending is within the scope and amount of appropriations (spending authority) set by Parliament. In this case I have needed to determine whether payments made to ineligible people were outside the scope of the appropriation and consequently unlawful.

Giving money away to ineligible people can be both unlawful and wasteful.

Inland Revenue does not know, and has said it may never know, how many ineligible people might have received the payment.

So we don’t even know how to assess how big an issue it was.

It was not intended that the payment would be made to people who had died.

LOL that he even has to state this!

Inland Revenue noted that some of the information it holds might not be up to date, which meant there was a risk that some eligible people might not receive the payment and, conversely, some ineligible people might receive it.

I am concerned that the Government does not know how significant the scale of payments to ineligible people is. The Minister of Revenue has been quoted by media as saying that it could be around 1% of payments. Inland Revenue told my staff that it is doing some work to improve the accuracy of future payments, but does not know, and may never know, how many ineligible people might have received the payment. This is, in my view, unacceptable.

Unacceptable is strong language from the AG.

So the Government was warned.