There has been so much money wasted by the Government in the last six years that it really takes something quite profligate to warrant a mention nowadays.

And man alive does the money wasted on those expiring Covid RAT kits warrant a mention. That wastage is out the gate and completely unnecessary.

Last week we thought it was just $160m worth of kits due to expire without being used, today we find out it’s actually $530m worth.

$530m is almost enough Government money to set up two Medical schools at Waikato University. It's half of Pharmac’s annual budget... that’s six months of life saving drugs. 

It would pay for all the beds, operating theatres, and imaging services being cut from Dunedin’s new hospital to save money… six times over.

And it didn’t need to be spent.

That is the frustrating thing. Private businesses were prepared to spend this money instead the Government spending it.

Remember that? 

Remember in January last year when private businesses were ordering RAT kits for their staff at the height of the Covid outbreak, and then in swooped Ashley Bloomfield and Jacinda Ardern and basically confiscated those RAT kits that were on order by telling the suppliers to give the RATs to the Government and not to private businesses.  

And for what? 

For them now to sit in storage and go to waste.

There is no way that we are going to use those 40 million remaining RAT kits by April; there are only 5 million of us. Each of us would have to use 8 boxes of RATs each... and remember there were three to five tests in each of those boxes.  

So we have to use 8 boxes each by April next year, and I haven’t even used one box this year.

It's not going to happen. 

That is money wasted.

I can’t understand why the Government did it, why they swooped and bought all the RATs —way more than we needed— when other people were prepared to spend their money instead.

The only explanation you can come to is mad control freakery from Jacinda and Ashley.

Just look around you. Look at all the things your town or region needs right now, because the Government can’t afford it. And to think it can’t afford it because half a billion dollars is sitting in warehouses going off.  

Of all the wasted money in the last six years this has got to be the worst.