Thursday, December 24, 2009

Culture and Heritage Has Wings Clipped


We were interested to read that Eventfinder and NZLive publishers of online events calendars have formed a partnership.

In our post HERE we called out the Ministry of Culture and Heritage for wasting taxpayers money by duplicating the successful and privately owned Eventfinder.co.nz with its own less successful website NZLive.com.

Last year, the owners of Eventfinder were justifiably concerned about the continued spending of taxpayers funds by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. They charged the ministry with unnecessarily duplicating and copying the features and innovation of their own successful website - and using a little under $3 million of taxpayers funds to do so! 

At the time of writing our original post we called for the incoming National led government to enact a line by line expenditure audit to uncover this rout and slash funding to this prescriptive, pompous, self-righteous ministry. 

The newly announced "partnership" between Eventfinder and NZLive has certainly clipped the wings of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage: but does it go far enough? For us this would appear to be yet another pragmatic comprimise that has become a typical MO of the Key led government.

If we are really serious about minimising unnecessary public expenditure we reckon that the Ministry of Culture and Heritage should have been
simply shut down... 

But I guess if the rumours are true that the previous Culture and Heritage Minister (Helen Clark) will be given recognition for services to the nation in the New Year's Honours List, then that would hardly be etiquette?

Source: Click HERE

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