Officials cannot say how much taxpayer money was sunk into a failed $33 million immigration IT project, with a fresh $6 million in costs uncovered and an independent audit now ordered to find the true total.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said today MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley advised her another $6 million in associated project costs had been identified for the Biometric Capability Upgrade (BCU), which was previously written off at around $33 million.
Stanford today told media the affair confirmed fears she had held "all along", and pointed to what she described as a pattern of behaviour predating the current Government.
"As soon as we pull one thread, more and more unravels," she said.
According to a statement from Stanford's office this afternoon, Blakeley told her he could not be confident even that figure captured the full extent of spending on the seven-year project, and has commissioned an independent financial audit.
Inquiry to look at the integrity of MBIE's conduct, including whether officials may have misled ministers. (Source: 1News)
The BCU, run within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), was meant to modernise Immigration NZ's identity management system but was ceased in December 2025 – having delivered no measurable benefits.
Stanford said her office uncovered the latest discrepancy while reviewing MBIE's answers to follow-up questions from the education and workforce select committee.
"Earlier this week, when reviewing answers that MBIE had provided in response to follow-up questions from the education and workforce committee, my office identified that financial information MBIE had provided in response to a question from the committee could not be correct," she said.
The minister said she had, in consultation with Finance Minister Nicola Willis, referred the matter to an ongoing Heron inquiry into the BCU project and the Public Service Commissioner, as it raised "questions regarding MBIE's financial controls more generally".
Sir Brian Roche faces questioning over claims ministers were misled in briefings about the scheme. (Source: 1News)
Stanford has also asked the Public Service Commissioner to consider whether the scope of the Heron inquiry needs to be widened to capture all matters relating to the project.
Stanford said her trust in the information she had received had been "severely damaged, and is getting worse", and that it should not have fallen to her office to catch the error.
"My staff and me should not be the final line of defence," she said.
"It wasn't until my office noticed some of the irregularities that it was raised, and so there are serious questions to be answered about MBIE's financial processes."
From the documents she had seen, she said, it looked "very likely" officials "had been going over the whole of life costs without going back to Cabinet for a long time, and then retrospectively asking Cabinet".
'We're finding out in real time' – Stanford
The Immigration Minister said chief executive Blakeley had not yet been able to tell her why it had happened, and was "finding out in real time, as I am".
The fresh revelation follows an independent review by consultant Greg James, released in June, which found MBIE gave ministers misleading advice, bypassed its own governance, and ignored warnings the project would not deliver.
That review also raised questions about whether MBIE had engaged in "creative accounting" to keep the project below the $35 million whole-of-life threshold that would have triggered Cabinet scrutiny.
It comes a day after Blakeley appeared before Parliament's privileges committee, where he was questioned over why ministry officials failed to tell a select committee in March that the project had effectively been terminated.
Blakeley told the committee officials had not deliberately set out to mislead, but that they held a "genuinely held belief at the time that there were commercial and budget sensitivities that limited what could be said in a public forum".
"In hindsight, we should have taken a different approach," he told the committee.
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