David Farrar: I wish more journalists would do research

The Herald reports:

Staff at a charitable trust working with Northland’s most vulnerable kids held crying families as they told them their services were under threat.

Stand Tū Māia plans to take Oranga Tamariki to court over its decision to terminate a three-year funding contract worth $21 million a year.

The organisation is seeking a court injunction and the existing contract enforced, to stop the government department from acting as if it has been cancelled.

I know nothing about this, but when I read a story like this I wonder why. So I do research. I look for their annual accounts. They are not on their website, but the charities register have them.

A wise accounting professor once told me to ignore income and expenditure and balance sheets as they can be easily adjusted through decisions such as whether you classify something as expenditure or capitalising an asset etc. He said always look at the cashflow. So I looked at their cashflow surplus in recent years. It is:

• 2020: Cash surplus of $3.1m on cash in of $24.7m
• 2021: Cash surplus of $0.8m on cash in of $23.7m
• 2022: Cash surplus of $2.9m on cash in of $25.4m
• 2023: Cash surplus of $9.2m on cash in of $36.6m

That is just from operating activities. Their total cash on hand has grown from $5.2m in 2018 to $28.0m in 2023. Now I don’t know if this is related to the OT decisions, but it certainly seems interesting that in five years their cash on hand has increased by around $23 million.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.