{"id":2101,"date":"2023-01-05T08:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T19:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2023-01-05T08:00:38","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T19:00:38","slug":"renting-closed-immigration-office-costs-taxpayers-nearly-3m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=2101","title":{"rendered":"Renting closed immigration office costs taxpayers nearly $3m"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The ongoing rent for an immigration office closed more than a year ago has cost taxpayers almost $3 million.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/450794\/immigration-new-zealand-shuts-its-beijing-office\">Immigration New Zealand&#8217;s Beijing office was shut in August 2021<\/a>, following the closures of sites in India, South Africa and the Philippines.<\/p>\n<p>The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment&#8217;s annual report shows it could not get out of its lease in China and will only be free of it next month.<\/p>\n<p>The rent has cost $2.89m since it closed.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, the government\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/476521\/immigration-nz-284m-loss-written-off-visa-levies-hiked-279-percent\">wrote off $284m of losses sustained by Immigration New Zealand<\/a>\u00a0(INZ), and has put visa levies up by 279 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Another funding review is expected to deal with a further predicted deficit of $135m by the end of next year.<\/p>\n<p>Other expenses last year included $57m on its new ADEPT online system, which has been plagued with problems.<\/p>\n<p>In an Official Information Act request, INZ said there had been no public consultation on the ADEPT platform, although it followed the appropriate government procurement process.<\/p>\n<p>SOURCE &#8211; RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ongoing rent for an immigration office closed more than a year ago has cost taxpayers almost $3 million. Immigration New Zealand&#8217;s Beijing office was shut in August 2021, following the closures of sites in India, South Africa and the Philippines. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment&#8217;s annual report shows it could not get [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2103,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}