Donna Awatere Huata is either very stupid of very smart, and I can't quite figure out which. I'd guess smart, in a pinch. But more passionate than smart in the end. I sincerely doubt it will ever be clear about whether she was using the Pipi Foundation as a cash cow, or whether she just thought the 4 minute reading programme was fantastic. Either way, consistently putting pressure upon officials is a course of action that is somewhat dodgy at the best of times. Doing so when you (or your close family) can benefit from the money is foolhardy in the extreme.
Interestingly though, a Minister of the Crown managed to get away with actions that were deemed "very unwise". I can't for the life of me remember (and I also can't find it on the internet *anywhere*) what the exact details were, but a Minister in Muldoon's government got himself involved in an application for a loan by his neice. The quote was that his actions were "very unwise", but not actually illegal.
Donna appears to me to be in a similar soup. Perhaps husbands are that much closer than nieces, and a one-off use of Ministerial influence is less effecting than consistent MP pressure. Either way, the Auditor General's report reads to me like somewhere between "very unwise" and "extremely unwise". But certainly comes short of declaring anything illegal. The question I'm left with is whether a smart lady like Donna is capable of being that unwise, or whether she broke the rules intentionally. At the very least, she seems to have completed some very acrobatic double-think to justify her behaviour to herself.
Perhaps the most concerning thing was the ineptness of Government Departments in their contract management. While the old public service was somewhat unresponsive, at least they kept records of everything and knew exactly which pencils were being used where. Perhaps it is just the problems attendant on any new system, or maybe it is just MoE and TPK that are not coping. But I worry that the dismantling of the Massey-reform based public service has opened new gaps for corruption. New Zealand can't afford that.
Lastly, Wellington is a tiny place, and New Zealand isn't much bigger. Regardless of what Mr and Mrs Huata have been up to, there must be many, many other liasons between MPs and the people/organisations they ernestly champion.
Posted by carla at November 10, 2003 10:20 PM