Well, this has turned out to be a nice little earner for the NZ Herald and their government shill site, One Roof: nearly $500,000 in non-disclosed advertising revenue from the taxpayer:
Housing Minister Megan Woods’ office has blamed a “clerical error” for wrongly claiming the Government was not sponsoring media stories on NZME’s OneRoof real estate website.
Stuff revealed last week that Government housing developer Kainga Ora was paying $25,000 a month for 64 media stories styled to look like news stories on the OneRoof site.
The stories did not have a disclaimer added until Stuff approached the KiwiBuild developer and NZME for comment, meaning it was not possible for the public to know they were sponsored.
National’s housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis had asked Woods in a written Parliamentary question in May whether a commercial relationship between Kainga Ora and NZME existed, given the flavour of the stories that were very favourable towards Kainga Ora.
Woods responded that no such long-term agreement existed.
But a new round of written questions eventually revealed that an agreement did exist.
Woods’ office wrote to Willis to correct the earlier answer, saying a “clerical error” was to blame.
That new response revealed the contract was worth $475,000.
Stuff
Megan Woods has again been outed as dishonest, sneaky, furtive and economical with the truth. Like all Labour ministers she’s blamed the staff for a “clerical error” when the reality is she would have signed off the answers in the first instance.
Now you know why senior staff in the Beehive talk about Megan Woods’s office being the “High Dependency Unit”. She has become the omnishambles of this government.
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