Wednesday, 13 April 2022 13:00

Who?

Written by The Hound

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OPINION: This old mutt understands a farmer had an 'interesting' experience when recently chosen by MBIE for a 'site visit' to audit their employment records.

The 'lucky' farmer informed MBIE - three times by email - that under the Covid red settings the farm was closed to all visitors and attached relevant information from the Government's own websites, which advised minimal contact and Zoom meetings if possible.

After much to-ing and fro-ing, MBIE finally agreed to conduct the investigation by phone.

The bureaucrat conducting the audit was told that all farm staff had Federated Farmers' contracts.

He then asked "Who is Federated Farmers?"

The farmer was then told to email said contracts to MBIE, but with each of these at over 100 pages, and rural internet flaky at the best of times, they were finally advised to post the agreements to Wellington.

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The canine crusader always has his nose in the air for more media maleficence, so was pointing as soon as he saw the Stuff headline: ‘Wellington residents respond to PM saying he doesn’t need his job!’.

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OPINION: It really is getting harder to lampoon government bureaucrats when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Anyone in the primary sector will know about the clowns covering the countryside in the red tape we all have to wade through.

Spare a thought then for media outfit Stuff who were threatened with fines up to $200,000 by a snivelling civil servant from the MoH for illustrating a quiz question with a photo of part of the cover of a 45-year-old copy Playboy.

As Stuff notes, “It wasn’t the Playboy cover which caused offence. No, it was the back page which… featured an advert for a cigarette brand”.

As Regulations Minister David Seymour notes, “The real scandal here is, well, no wonder we’ve got problems in healthcare when they’re doing the Stuff quiz during work time.”

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