Hide Rodney: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
Hide Rodney: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:618;Page:14425] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 What we have in the chair is a Minister of Corrections who is engaged in a cover-up and a whitewash. The Minister spent $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money on fake and phoney iwi consultation and when confronted with that said yes the money seemed to be excessive and he would demand a report. He then had an internal report written by the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections and it covered nothing. It is a disgrace that Minister Paul Swain when confronted with the allegations of misspending went to his own department for a report. I tell members that Minister Paul Swain will be found wanting. 
The great Tainui people did not accept what Minister Paul Swain found out. They did not rely on the Department of Corrections; they employed a forensic accountant. Rather than looking at the $1.5 million they looked at just one contract for $305000. I have here a copy of the report on that. It shows that the Department of Corrections has been spending taxpayers’ money out of control not on iwi consultation but to get a result. And what do we find? We find soft contracts without specified deliverables fake time sheets duplicate payments and the Department of Corrections spending taxpayers’ money on iwi consultation in a corporate box. And who happened to be there? Staff of the Department of Corrections were there on that iwi consultation. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: How many corporate boxes have you been in? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Now the Minister wants to know how many corporate boxes I have been in. Well I can say that I have not been in any that were paid for by the Department of Corrections. 
John Carter 
: He wouldn’t know. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: He would not know. Then what happened in the Chamber when the Minister was asked about that report which has seen the co-chairman of Tainui fired because the Tainui people have standards and expect accountability? I do not know why Labour has an MP from Tainui because she has not alerted Labour’s own Minister to this problem. The report found there had been $42000 of duplicate payments. The trust was being paid to employ four full-time people and the department was then paying those employees as well. Those were the duplicate payments. The Department of Corrections said it would hold back the money because there had been duplicate payments. When the four people complained the department paid it. The report by the forensic accountant Dennis Parsons states that that money should never have been paid because it was an incorrect payment. That is what Tainui found. 
I ask the Minister whether his own department alerted him to that. Either it did or it did not. Did it alert him to the double payments to the fake time sheets or to the corporate box? Did it alert him to the fact that his department was paying for consultants who were on contract to do a job to fly to Australia? Did it alert him to that? And what did the Minister say in the Chamber today? He got up and said he did not believe any of that. He said he had not read the report but he did not believe that could be true. If I were the Minister I would be asking for an independent report into where that money went. I would be going to the Tainui people and saying I had heard that Rodney Hide had a report and asking if they could maybe share a copy of it with me so I could have my people look at it. The Minister’s chief executive has sold him a pup and he has bought it. The chief executive has written a cover-up and engaged in a whitewash and the Minister has done nothing about it.