Tell you what I’m not sorry to see the back of, and that’s the Provincial Growth Fund.

That’s been a giant waste of taxpayer money hasn’t it?

Today’s spend up on marae maintenance is the last of the PGF and isn’t it just a perfect example of the waste that that fund has been for the last three years?

Here we have Shane Jones and Nanaia Mahuta handing out nearly $100m to Iwi who in some cases are absolutely wealthy enough to be able to fund the maintenance of their marae themselves.

Take for example Waikato-Tainui. They’ll get some of the $14m headed to the Waikato area. They have – at last count - $1.2 billion in assets.

This not to beat up on Iwi. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of a poorly-designed scheme that pours money into undercooked and unwarranted ideas. Take for example the Northland Trust that was funded to plant 1.2 million seedlings, could only plant 191,000 of them and ended up mulching $160K worth of the stuff.

And doesn’t it say everything that we have a PGF announcement 8 days from an election. In my opinion, that’s all this ever was: a scheme designed to buy the loyalty of regional voters, dressed up as doing good for the regions.

But credit to Kiwis, it hasn’t worked. The party that designed this scheme and rolled out most of the spending is about to be booted out of parliament. We’re not fools. We saw it for what it is.

Good riddance to this gigantic waste of money and let’s hope this is a lesson to other parties: if your waste of taxpayer money for political gain is too transparent, it can backfire. Just look at NZ First sitting at 2% in the polls.