Strawberry farm audit

Press, 8 December 1987, Page 2

Strawberry farm audit

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The Audit Office is investigating the use of public moneys, through Mana Enterprises and Maori Access, at the Mangaroa strawberry project near Hastings. This business has received a Mana loan, but there have been complaints that the owners, Mr Wi Huata and Ms Donna Awatere, have been using Maori Access workers.

Maori Access is supposed to be a job-training scheme and none of the approved Maori Access projects in Hawke’s Bay involve picking strawberries on the Mangaroa project.

This became a matter of public attention a month ago when the Opposition spokesman on Maori Affairs, Mr Winston Peters (Nat., Tauranga), began questioning the overseers of Mana during consideration of the Maori Affairs Department estimates.

Mr Peters failed to get Parliament’s Maori Affairs Select Committee to investigate his allegations on Mangaroa. The Secretary of Maori Affairs, Dr Tamati Reedy, backed his officers in Hawke’s Bay in declining to initiate a formal inquiry himself. Dr Reedy said no formal audit was needed

because projects such as that at Mangaroa were under constant and close monitoring by me department. Mr Peters said it was a damning indictment of the Government that while blocking calls for an inquiry an independent authority, upon reviewing the evidence, had decided that such a course of action would be appropriate.

He produced for the select committee an affidavit from a non-Maori woman that she had worked as an Access worker picking strawberries at Mangaroa.

This woman’s name was being kept confidential because threats were being made against her, Mr Peters said.

Taxpayers needed to be assured that their money was being spent properly and that accountability procedures were there to monitor Government schemes. Yet evidence he had presented to the select committee and Parliament showed that accountability procedures for Mana were not what they should be. Unless there were rigid performance criteria for Maori Access then the scheme would fall into disrepute and fail. “I am not prepared to allow Maoridonrto be serviced by inferior standards,” Mr Peters said.