Turei Metiria: Urgent Debates — Te Wananga o Aotearoa—Auditor-General’s Report 
Turei Metiria: Urgent Debates — Te Wananga o Aotearoa—Auditor-General’s Report 
[Volume:628;Page:549] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 It is certainly true that the report of the Controller and Auditor-General is a bad report. It does not exonerate Rongo Wetere. The conflicts of interest which are set out in the report were extensive and over a long period of time and the financial transactions that were involved and integrated into those conflicts of interest reached the many millions of dollars. It shows in our view a very clear failure on the part of those who were managing te wananga at the time to manage properly the public funds that were set for a very critical public function. We believe that the management including any of the Government appointees and all the Government-associated organisations that were involved with the wananga over that time—all of them—must take full responsibility for their part in these failures. They should do this because they should protect the tauira who are the real point of the wananga’s existence.  
There has been considerable criticism about the roll growth at the wananga and what this has actually demonstrated is the desperate need for an institution like this. Sixty thousand students have found a supportive and responsive environment; obviously one they could not find anywhere in the tertiary sector. The report alongside its more damning comments notes that the wananga attracts a very high proportion of mature students Maori students and students without previous qualifications. Here lies the real strength of the wananga its intention and what it is really good at doing: providing support and education for those people. The wananga fills a gap that has been left by decades of a State education system that has failed generations of Maori and Pakeha alike. Its roll growth is a clear example of that.  
I have seen some of the restructuring proposals by some of the people currently involved with the wananga sharing how they will restructure the wananga so that it is effective and continues to deliver for the students and staff. These restructuring proposals support the core business of the wananga are clear about the functions and the fundamental purpose of the wananga’s existence support the students in the sorts of services they want to see provided by the wananga and support the staff who in some ways are the most affected and the most voiceless in these circumstances.  
I know of a number of courses in Dunedin being run under the wananga and a number of marae—particularly north of Dunedin on the coast—that run wananga courses for things like weaving for example and other courses. These are small marae working for their community. They provide inclusive courses for their community which are not for Maori only as the Government seems to insist—an obviously discriminatory and exclusive system—but are an inclusive means for these people to come together to learn new skills and ideas and to share them with their community.  
These marae are community focused and they provide a focal point for community action. Because they are small and marae based they support the students and staff in a wide range of areas not just in the skills that they are working on at the time. With some of them—and with one in particular just north of Dunedin on the coast—there is extraordinary success for those tauira in developing artistic skills in particular. This has led to a number of those tauira participating in very prestigious exhibitions in Dunedin alongside polytechnic and university fine-art students’ work. It clearly shows that there is a role for the wananga in providing these services. People need them and the wananga is able to get to the smallest possible communities and provide that support.  
We cannot allow the tauira and the staff to suffer any more uncertainty than they already have in the political debacle that has surrounded the wananga. Politicians in this House—particularly those from National and ACT—should also take full responsibility about their role in driving up that uncertainty which makes it more and more difficult for staff and students to continue to operate within the wananga environment given the extraordinary support that the wananga can provide for them.  
Finally I urge those responsible for the mismanagement of the wananga—and it is clear that there has been considerable mismanagement—to think first and foremost about the students and staff and to take the action they need to take. If that means resigning then they should resign. They should take full responsibility for their failures so that those students and staff can have a sense of being able to continue with their work and have some security about what they are doing. I urge the Government also to take responsibility for its failed management of which there have been considerable examples—of course it always seems to get away with not taking that responsibility—for its refusal to provide the settlement funds that it was supposed to provide and continues not to; for its failure in its policy that allowed for the rapid expansion in the number of students for its failure to constrain in its policy framework that rapid growth; and for the failure of the Government appointees and all of the Government agencies that have continually reviewed and looked at the wananga over a number of years to manage the situation effectively. In fact the Government could have done a lot more to make sure that the wananga did not get to this point. It failed to do so—why I do not know—and therefore has contributed considerably to the failure of the wananga and needs to take full responsibility for that.  
In the end our concern is for the staff and students of the wananga. We strongly support the wananga’s intention and its purpose. We believe it provides a very good essential service to a large number of members of the community that no other institution is able to provide and we hope that in the future the wananga will continue to provide those services to its people.