Public Infrastructure Corruption

Like, I mean, are you not tempted? Come on, you are claws are out. It's kind of like that. Was about, oh, that's that's a bit nasty, it's a bit catty, isn't it? Loved it. Anyway, what she's trying to do here is she is basically trying to shame them at MFAT into falling in line and making the cuts. And so she's trying to make them look like high spenders, and I don't know that they are high spenders. But what I do know is that we shouldn't. I just think it's silly for us to have these debates about business class. If you are a professional, look, and I say this is somebody who I don't, there's no skin in the game here, right? I don't, I don't get flown internationally by my workplace. They are not going to pay for business class for me for nothing ever. I don't think I've ever had business class paid for me by my workplace. I can't think of it. I mean, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think so. So I I'm not saying this is somebody who's trying to defend my patch. I just think if you're a professional and you're flying internationally, of course you should bloody be in business class if we're flying you a great distance. And I and and and the immediate thing that I thought of was, oh, okay, are we saying Winnie P shouldn't be in business class? Because let me just read you the list of destinations that he has been into just in this term, right? This is just 2023 to now. He has gone to Fiji, Australia, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, New Way, Tuvalu. Oh, Tuvalu twice, probably went there twice. New Caledonia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Kiribati, Indonesia, Singapore, Egypt, Poland, Belgium, Sweden, the US, Philippines, Timor Leste, uh, Vietnam. Have I said Japan already? Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, China, Vanuatu, Kitabas. I've said that one, Malaysia, Argentina, Argentina, I mean, a Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, French Polynesia, and some of those places he's gone to twice. And I've definitely left places off, by the way, and I've repeated myself multiple times. But he's actually got a Wikipedia page. Like he's obviously very proud of his travel. So he's he it looks to me like he's set up that little Wikipedia page himself to let us know how much he's traveling. But seriously, you want to tell somebody who's traveling that much they have to go in in premium economy. Or even an economy, that's being silly. And then and now it's now it's started a thing about oh, who's the big spender here? Because then somebody went and had a chat to to Richard Harmon from Politic, which is the nerdy nerds politics newsletter that goes out, and somebody said, Oh, well, how much does a business class ticket cost, eh? Six and a half thousand dollars on average. When the Prime Minister flies on the RNZAF 757 aircraft, that costs 309,000 just to go to Shanghai, and then the same to come back. So now who's the big spender? So anyway, don't fight about business class, because then we have to talk about Air Force class, and then it gets weird. If you deserve it, they should pay for it. Sixteen away from seven.