Intervention sought

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 8

Intervention sought

The Prime Minister has been asked to intervene in the affairs of the Te Arawa Maori Trust Board, whose accounts have been found by the Auditor-Gen-eral to be more than three years in arrears.

Te Arawa is one of several Maori trust boards identified by the AuditorGeneral as in arrears.

There have been questions in Parliament about how a trust board can be authorised to allocate Maori Access and Mana enterprise moneys when its own finances do not

seem to be in order. One trust board, that of the Tainui tribe in northern King Country, has been identified as being six years in arrears with its accounts.

Now Mr Lange has been approached by elders in the Te Arawa region at Rotorua to have an audit done. The message was sent via Mr Peter Tapsell (Lab., Eastern Maori).

The Opposition spokes-

man on Maori Affairs, Mr Winston Peters (Nat, Tauranga), told Parliament’s Maori Affairs Select Committee that the approach to Mr Lange through Mr Tapsell meant that the Minister of Maori Affairs, Mr Wetere, had become irrelevant

The Secretary for Maori Affairs, Dr Tamati Reedy, told the committee that Mr Wetere knew all about the developments over the Te Arawa Trust Board.