Sepuloni Carmel: Urgent Debates — Whānau Ora—Auditor-General’s ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Urgent Debates — Whānau Ora—Auditor-General’s Report[Sitting date: 06 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3247. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):Marama Fox from the Māori Party said that when things go wrong when there are problems with something the Opposition’s first position is to say “Cut it.” At no point have we said “Cut it.” but what we are saying is that the responsible thing now is to explore the findings of the Auditor-General and to ask the question why. We support the concept of Whānau Ora. We support the idea of integrated services provision. We support the idea of addressing the needs of a whole family rather than just an individual but we have to ask questions following the release of this report.The biggest question we have to ask is around spending. One third of the money put towards Whānau Ora—$42.3 million—went towards administration of the programme. I want to say that I understand that when you start something new there are going to be additional administrative costs but one third of the funding going towards administration is something that needs to be explored.The thing is too that that $42.3 million—one third of the funding that went towards Whānau Ora which has been attributed to administration—is the administrative cost only at the Te Puni Kōkiri level and at the commissioning agency level. If you look at the providers who would then be commissioned by the commissioning agencies there are going to be further administrative costs there. I do not think that the administrative costs of those providers will reach one third of the funding that they get. But if they were to reach that level of funding you would be spending two thirds of the funding allocated towards Whānau Ora on administration at the Te Puni Kōkiri level and at the commissioning agency level and then at the provider level. Effectively out of $130 million you would be left with only about $40 million that would be going directly to whānau.That was never the intention of the programme from what we believe with regard to when the Māori Party first announced it. The idea was that more money would go directly towards helping whānau. If only $40 million one third of the funding is actually reaching whānau after you take the administration from Te Puni Kōkiri the commissioning agencies and then the providers well effectively this is how much money those individuals who were getting help were getting.We know there were 43000 because Te Ururoa Flavell said that about 43000 individuals were helped by Whānau Ora funding and about 9000 families. If you add that up and say that only $40 million made it to the actual ground then that would be less than $100 per person who benefited in some way from Whānau Ora. That would be only $444 per family who benefited from Whānau Ora.So you can see here that there are real problems with the way in which Whānau Ora is operating under the National Government and we need to investigate it further. It is not just us on this side of the House being cynical but actually it is the responsible thing to do and it is actually what the Auditor-General said needs to be done. It needs to be explored further. This is not us criticising just for the sake of criticising; this is us being the watchdog of Parliament holding the Government to account on its spending and saying actually that this is not responsible nor is it acceptable—$43 million on administration just at Te Puni Kōkiri and at the commissioning agency level.I ran an NGO for 3 years before coming here a Pacific NGO and I know how hard our NGO sector works. I know how hard they are working on the smell of an oily rag. I know that many of the providers out there have had no funding increases for the last 6 years under this National Government. I also know that it was not all smooth sailing when the Whānau Ora funding was rolled out. There were problems that occurred even within my own Pacific community—competition that came about that was not necessarily the healthiest. There were issues there with regard to the relationships and the collaboration that was happening or not happening in the sector so those things need to be investigated as well.I do want to also just touch on the fact that the Whānau Ora approach is about supporting whānau rather than just individuals. It is about looking at the whole whānau. It has been problematic and the report points that out because that culture or that kaupapa is not necessarily adopted by the two main ministries that are working alongside Whānau Ora—being the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Development. There are inconsistencies there that also need to be addressed. It is our responsibility as a Parliament to explore this further.