KEY POINTS:
I'm at a complete loss to understand how $600 million can be lost from the country's books, then found again.
To be fair, I'm at a complete loss when it comes to sums anyway, although I was gratified to read this week that I'm not alone.
Apparently, half the population has low or very low numeracy skills and two-thirds struggle with problem-solving. And it appears that some of those struggling problem-solvers work at Inland Revenue.
The IRD commissioner conceded that human error resulted in the Government reporting its first operating balance deficit in 15 years and he's very sorry. The news was grist to the anti-Cullenites' mill and had them crowing that this was yet more proof that the Minister of Finance didn't know what he was doing.
But really, is it the Minister's job to go through and check all the figures presented to him by his ministries? He's not there to mark their homework, surely. The worrying thing is that it appears nobody questioned the error. Everyone just assumed that because the numbers said so, it was fact.
A couple of businesspeople told me this week that if they were expecting their company to turn a profit for the quarter and their accountant reported a loss, they'd want the numbers checked, and checked again.
They'd make the accountant go through them with a fine-toothed comb and if the figures were still on the wrong side of the ledger after that, they'd do it themselves.
The cavalier attitude is also a bit worrying - as if losing $600 million is the IRD equivalent of losing 20c.
Just for the record, guys, it's not. People who think in a linear fashion don't tend to ask questions. Maybe it would be a good idea for the IRD to employ a few philosophers who muse in a right-brain kind of a fashion. It would even up the balance, and show the left-brain number-crunchers that there's another way of looking at the world.
