Henare Tau: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Henare Tau: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15019] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 This past year has been an appalling one for not only the Minister of Maori Affairs but also unfortunately Te Puni Kokiri. I do not particularly blame the staff of Te Puni Kokiri; I blame the Minister who—just as a point of reference—is not even in the Chamber tonight to hear the debate on the financial review of his own department. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member is quite right. There are to be no further references like that I say to the member. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: During this past year we saw the manoeuvring of the Minister of Maori Affairs into a mode of spin. It has been a year of spin. We have talked about the Maori Potential Fund. The Minister talked about 410 investments having been made through the Maori Potential Fund. Do members know what that Maori Potential Fund was? It was nothing more than trying to choose winners. It was trying to give money away to things like rugby football when that should have been funded by the New Zealand Rugby Union. But Te Puni Kokiri thought that it had better do it. 
It was there the little Maori Potential Fund and it gave money to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research of all things. We would have thought that somebody in the Ministry for the Environment or maybe somewhere else would give money to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research for its purposes. But no Parekura Horomia in his capacity as the Minister of Maori Affairs thought that it would be a good idea for Te Puni Kokiri to fund those sorts of things. 
In the last year the ministry discontinued the use of memorandums of understanding between other Government agencies and that really really worried us here in National. Te Puni Kokiri and the Minister said basically that it is there for one thing and for one thing only—that is if memorandums of understanding were carried out with other Government agencies then that would limit its effectiveness in influencing policy directions. I mean what a have! This ministry has now become the Minister’s own slush fund. 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: To win its re-election. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: It is not about winning the election for Labour; it is about securing the Minister’s seat up on the East Coast. 
John Hayes 
: Well he’s not going to be able to. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: But he will not be able to—absolutely. I hear that there is a person who is— 
Hon Member 
: Foxy. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Well yes he could be a fox but he will give Parekura Horomia a good run for his money. One of the other issues raised by the Maori Affairs Committee was staff overseas travel. Normally Te Puni Kokiri’s travel expenditure is relatively low but this year or the year we are talking about the general manager of the Maori Trust Office was overseas more times than not for one reason or another. 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: More than the Minister even. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: More times than the Minister was. So all in all Te Puni Kokiri is a department that should have shown more initiative within our community rather than being established this year or during the last financial year as some sort of community bank that Maori organisations could go to in order to get a few dollars. 
For Otago Maori rugby to get a few dollars the people involved should have gone to the Otago Rugby Football Union. But no Te Puni Kokiri had to fund initiatives like that. It gave little dollars here and there just to keep the natives happy. That is all it was; it was just to keep the boys and girls in the community happy with a few dollars so that they could work on their community projects. What a shame really that other ministries did not pick up on this and fund those organisations as they should have been funded rather than in a piecemeal manner.