The Government is planning on spending half a million dollars more on a second business case about a potential merger between TVNZ and RNZ.
In May, 1 NEWS revealed the Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi had spent nearly $400,000 on a 100-page draft business case by PWC on the merger, which contained a lot of publicly available information.
Now, the Minister has confirmed Deloitte is preparing a separate Strong Public Media business case which will assess options surrounding the design of a new public media entity, consider its viability and look at potential operating models.
The Government is expecting to spend $500,000 on this report according to written Parliamentary answers.
ACT Party leader David Seymour said given the price tag he hoped it tells Faafoi more than the PWC report, which included information such as "who the chief executive of TVNZ is".
"Perhaps we should be looking at the quality of our 59,000 strong public service and why they can’t put together a business case. We can’t keep outsourcing reports like this at a huge cost to hard-working taxpayers."
Faafoi said an assessment was made that the business case work was not a "business as usual skillset for the Ministry".
"It is usual to supplement the capabilities of Government departments with external subject matter experts because of the scope and complexity of the work."
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