Shirley Ken: General Debate 
Shirley Ken: General Debate 
[Volume:623;Page:18674] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 I think the House and the country at large is concerned at the lack of accountability that has been exposed in Te Wananga o Aotearoa. The Government’s representative on the governing board Mr McNally has described a culture of executive extravagance. Yet we have also learnt this week that under this Labour Government funding for the wananga went from $8 million per year to $239 million last year. That is over a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money. 
Let us have a look at some of the governance issues. I say at the outset that the ACT party applauds entrepreneurial spirit. We do not mind people getting rich or becoming prosperous provided it is based on quality service provision and provided they are not rorting the taxpayer. They are the two key criteria and I very much doubt that this organisation meets them. It is clear that a group of people in this organisation are getting very very rich at the taxpayers’ expense. 
When we look at the governance situation there are a number of issues. The key question is: why has the Government not moved to address these problems? One thing we do know is that one of the major programmes the Mahi Ora programme was developed by a staff member and sold to the wananga for $7 million. That was $7 million of taxpayers’ money. The course was developed and sold to them by a woman called Susan Cullen 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: How much did she make? 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Indeed! She happens to be the daughter of the chief executive officer Rongo Wetere. That just happens to be a coincidence. That is the pattern of governance and I believe what could well be rorts in this organisation. 
We have heard today about the car-grooming business. There are dozens of these shelf companies. If we look at the ownership structure of these companies—the shareholders and the directors—they are all cross-pollinated. It would seem that all the same people are cross-pollinating these companies clipping the taxpayers’ ticket and rorting the taxpayers of this country. 
I will talk about the Oma Investments shelf company which supplies all the apparel and the resource kits. Let us be quite clear—there are 27000 students at this university. It is an enormous organisation and the inducements that are paid—using taxpayers’ money of course—to get students enrolled include free T-shirts free sweatshirts free briefcases and free laptops which students are told they can keep at the end of the course. Why? Because every time the wananga enrols someone it gets funding for another equivalent full-time student—another $5000 of taxpayers’ money. We learnt last year that it even enrolled members of Parliament. Members of Parliament were staggered to find that they had been enrolled in a wananga course. One needs only to stand in a queue for a hamburger particularly if one looks Maori and the next thing one knows one is enrolled and getting the kit with the apparel and all the rest of it. 
So Oma Investments supplies all this equipment. Guess who the shareholders are? The shareholders are the wananga chief executive officer Rongo Wetere the campus manager from Te Kuiti the ex-chairman of the council three other council members and the directors. It is made up of Rongo Wetere two of his sons the chairman of the council and so on. This is an absolutely endemic pattern. That structure was revealed in the parliamentary select committee inquiry that was tabled in the House yet the Government has continued to pump in nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in one financial year into this organisation. The quality of some of the courses provided is such that I have information to say that students do not even need to finish a course they need only to enrol. The wananga is not interested after a student enrols; it has its $5000. There are no quality checks. It even seems that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is giving out certificates to students who are now complaining because they pulled out of their courses yet they got their full kit—their T-shirts their sweatshirts and their computers.