Does this government and its agencies hold the record for the most money wasted on propaganda?
The government and Waka Kotahi are wasting money on advertising what amounts to an admission of failure.
They’re failing to make roads safer and so in an effort to reduce the road toll they’re resorting to reducing speed limits and trying to convince us that’s good.
The advertisement isn’t the only money being wasted on transport mistakes.
The Auckland tram might cost $29.2 billion.
That is $15,000 for every household in New Zealand. So every family in Gore and Hastings and Levin will be paying $15,000 more tax so Auckland gets some trams to the airport!
If it costs $29.2 billion, then that is a cost of:
- $1.22 billion per km
- $1.22 million per metre
- $12,167 per cm
- $1,217 per mm
Think of the opportunity cost. A new four lane motorway costs around $50 million per km. For what the Government may spend on trams in Auckland you could construct a 630 km long four lane motorway. That is approximately the distance from Auckland to Wellington. . .
Back to annoying advertisements, Waka Kotahi has another that starts by showing a driver swerving to avoid a possum.
It is, as Camryn Brown writes, a case study in obliviousness :
. . . Consider the TV ad for the new “Road to Zero” campaign. What does that ad want you to do? A typical road safety ad wants you to slow down, be sober, or wear a seatbelt. This ad has nothing for a road user to act on, it simply promotes the idea of an all-of-system approach to road safety. It tells you that road safety depends on coordinated work across enforcement, road design, regulation, and so on.
It shares this big idea that has excited the bureaucrats so you may see how clever they are and so that you may appreciate them more.
That’s what the ad wants you to do – it wants you to know what the bureaucracy is doing to do and it wants you to think better of them for it. The beneficiary of the ad is the public service, not the public. . .
Compounding the waste of money is the stupidity of showing a driver swerving to avoid a possum, which is dangerous.
If the advertisement pointed out that drivers should never swerve to avoid a small animal and that running over a possum would be doing a service to conservation because they’re pests which carry TB and prey on native fauna and flora it might be acceptable.
But it doesn’t to that and it’s not acceptable use of scarce money that would be far better spent on making roads safer.
Instead, they’re wasting millions on an expensive exercise in bureaucratic back patting.
It does nothing to encourage safer driving and it reinforces the growing chasm between the government, its agencies and the public who finance their wasteful spending.
Homepaddock 
Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind and commented:
More money wasted on propaganda
LikeLike