Roy Heather: General Debates 
Roy Heather: General Debates 
[Volume:613;Page:9722] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 We have had the sermon and now we are about to have the lesson! We have here a shonky payment. Precious health dollars have been diverted to pay the tax bill of a public trust. The trust is the Te Whare Whakapikiora o te Rangimarie Trust which is based in Napier. The Ministry of Health wrote a letter to Mr Apera Clark the chair of the trust on 8 January 2002 inviting him to forward to the ministry an invoice for the final payment of $90665.33 GST inclusive and asking him to confirm that he would receive the money by signing the letter and returning it to the ministry. Some stipulations were attached to the letter one of which concerned the fact that the ministry had a tax bill from the Inland Revenue Department. The trust owed the tax department $74146.96. Once the ministry received the invoice it would pay the outstanding Inland Revenue Department tax bill on behalf of the trust. 
That raises many questions which the Minister of Health to date has been unable to answer satisfactorily. Why was a final payment being made to the trust when there was no contractual obligation to do so? The Ministry of Health had already written to the trust to tell it that its contract would not be renewed. The reason was that in August 2000 an audit of the trust had been carried out by the Ministry of Health. Of the 64 criteria that the ministry tested at the clinic run by the trust it failed 39. Those failed criteria included such things as basic hygiene and whether the practitioners were writing down the dosages of the medications they were dispensing which are very basic things. 
The spending was also in question. The ministry discovered that money was being spent not on providing health services to the Maori people of Napier for “cultural and spiritual healing” as the trust was contracted to do but by the chairman and his wife who was co-signatory of the trust chequebook on personal rent power groceries dog food spa pools digital and Sky television—not just one but two digital television providers— 
Brian Connell 
: Sounds like a hotel. 
HEATHER ROY 
: Absolutely. It was not five-star—the member should have seen the mess. The money was also spent on petrol and cases of muttonbirds. The question arises as to whether the ministry actually cares how precious health dollars are being spent. It seems that it does not because the ministry did not shut those guys down when they failed to meet 39 of the 64 criteria. What did the ministry do? It gave them a second chance. Mr Clark is a clairvoyant who provided traditional Maori healing. He provided spiritual and cultural healing to the Maori people of Napier. Any other health practitioner would have been shut down immediately and been struck off by his or her registering body. Did that happen? No. Mr Apera Clark who was the chair of the trust was responsible for helping to draw up the guidelines for traditional Maori healing in 1993. Then hey presto in 1995 when the Ministry of Health agreed to have a pilot scheme for traditional Maori healing who should get the contract but Mr Apera Clark’s trust? That is exactly what happened. 
The main problem here is that the tax has been paid by the Ministry of Health. Why did the ministry continue to pay Mr Apera Clark $2076 per week for 10 months after the audit that I have just described when he was running a shonky business? The answer is clear. He had a tax bill that needed to be addressed. The Ministry of Health knew about that bill and invited him to submit an invoice to it so that the bill could be paid on his behalf. That trust received special treatment.