The Plumbers Gasfitters and drainlayers Board is required to operate in a fair and reasonable manner and one issue bought to the Board’s attention and to the attention of the previous Minister was cross subsidisation of fees. The issue raised was ignored by the previous Registrar, by the previous Chairman, by the previous Minister, the Auditor General, in fact it was ignored by everyone who has anything to do with fees and the levy.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment theoretically keep a watchful eye on the PGD Board operations and advise the Minister but nothing was done about the issue of cross subsidisation. Now cross subsidisation is not illegal, but all guidelines seem to indicate they need to be open and transparent about it.

What we are talking about is the abuse of cross subsidisation. Cross subsidisation is when one fee or levy is used to subsidise another function for which a fee or levy is charged, and in our case it was subsidising registration by charging extra for licensing. See if you can figure out what the money has been spent on.


Linkback: https://www.plumbers.nz/fellow-practitioners-update/41/fellow-practitioner-issue-259-dated-19-june-2015/1880/