Callaghan Innovation pinged for $300k on entertainment, including drag queens

Thirty people sank 11 bottles of wine at an evening out while being entertained by drag queens at Auckland's Caluzzi bar.

Government agency Callaghan Innovation has been accused of a culture of dining out on the taxpayer's credit card after spending more than $300,000 on entertainment.

Set up to help Kiwi hi-tech businesses, the agency's spending in the 2015/16 financial year was listed in an Official Information Act obtained by the Taxpayers' Union lobby group.

It included a $2063 receipt for an evening with drag queens at Auckland's Caluzzi cabaret bar, covering the purchase of 11 bottles of wine and dinner for 30 people.

While he says he's got nothing against drag queens, Taxpayers' Union head Jordan Williams claims the night was "just one of many blatant abuses of taxpayer money by the Crown agency".

"You don't pay your taxes for a government agency to go out and spend it on drag queens," he said.

Science and Innovation Minister Dr Megan Wood said she became aware of the agency's entertainment bill shortly after becoming a minister.

"While there is a place for entertainment, especially when completing commercial deals, I made clear to Callaghan the level of internal spending was not up to the standards I expected," she said.

"Callaghan has assured me they take that seriously, and have assured me that they have changed their policy so that this won't happen again."

Callaghan said, in a statement, the total spending was "not unreasonable for a client-facing organisation of our size", but there were a few cases of spending that were "not appropriate".

"Since then we have tightened relevant policies to ensure work-related spending by staff is modest and appropriate for the public sector," it said.

The organisation was looking to publicly publish its spending in the future to provide greater transparency, it said.

- NZN