Cutting NBR subscription not part of wider plan

Inland Revenue says it will save nearly $40,000 a year by axing its subscription to the National Business Review but that it is not part of a wider plan to cut back on its media spend.

The department was understood to be one of NBR’s largest subscribers and the cost-saving measure sparked speculation that the media could be about to suffer a twin blow as public sector agencies sought economies ordered by the Government.

Agencies have already cut back their advertising spending as Finance Minister Nicola Willis heralds a new era of smaller government in a bid to drive government spending down to no more than 30% of GDP, from its current level of 33.4%.

Inland Revenue spokesperson said its NBR subscription had cost $33,000 plus GST and was the only thing that it had cut.

Other large governments departments indicated they hadn’t sought to cut back on their media subscription purchases, or at least not recently.

A spokesperson for the Department of Internal Affairs said it subscribed to very few publications, online or in print.

“We generally have individual subscriptions for those people who need them rather than corporate subscriptions, which helps keep costs down. We have not reduced our subscriptions recently as they are already tightly managed.

“We rely mostly on a media monitoring service to provide summaries of media coverage. The service was reviewed 18 months ago, and the cost reduced by 16%,” they said.

Ministry of Social Development general manager of information Hannah Morgan said it didn’t centrally collate such spending but its records didn’t indicate any reduction in spending on media subscriptions.

“Relevant teams, for example, the media team, confirmed they have not reduced spending on subscriptions.”

The Ministry of Education said it had made no changes to the number of its paid media subscriptions.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” a spokesperson said.