Alongside the woes crowding in on John Tamihere’s Waipareira Trust — including the report into Manurewa Marae due at the end of January and news that the Charities Services intends to deregister the trust over political donations — there has been a largely unremarked move by the Ministry of Māori Development / Te Puni Kōkiri to reopen tenders for Whānau Ora cash.
The news broke in late June, and clearly came as a bombshell to Tamihere, whose organisations have long been recipients of taxpayer money.
As part of the government’s Whanau Ora policy, Te Puni Kōkiri contracts three commissioning agencies throughout New Zealand — and pays them tens of millions — to achieve “outcomes” rather than being required to provide “specific services or outputs”:
• Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu works with whānau and families in the South Island.
• The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (also called Te Pou Matakana) covers the North Island.
• Pasifika Futures is dedicated to working with Pacific families across the country.
The agencies serve, in effect, as intermediaries between the government’s Whānau Ora funding programme and the myriad of community-based health and social support providers that they engage as partners.
A significant portion of the more than $180 million the government allocates to the Whānau Ora programme goes to the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) that Tamihere heads as its Chief Executive, with his wife, Awerangi Tamihere, as Chief Operating Officer. It covers social, health and education services for whānau across the entire North Island.
One of its shareholders is the social services charity Te Whānau O Waipareira Trust, which is also run by Tamihere as CEO, and again with his wife as Chief Operating Officer. It is based in West Auckland and helped promote the Census and the Covid-19 vaccination drive — including through South Auckland’s Manurewa Marae, which also served as a polling booth for 2023’s election.
The Waipareira Trust and WOCA are both headquartered at the same West Auckland address and share administrative and back-office support. By all accounts, it would be difficult to manoeuvre a cigarette paper between them. Indeed, in the trust’s 2023-24 Annual Report, WOCA’s chair, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, described their relationship as “indivisible” and praised the trust as “pivotal to our success, and our ability to be ground breakers of authentic Whānau Ora services”.
However, just how much longer WOCA will be able to fund the same level of “authentic Whānau Ora services” has suddenly become an open question that won’t be answered until next month.
On May 31, Tamihere was celebrating the confirmation in the previous day’s Budget that total Whānau Ora funding would have a slight increase from $181.7 million to $182.3m for the coming fiscal year.
Describing his relationship with the government as “strong”, Tamihere said: “I’ve had many interactions with our Whānau Ora Minister, Tama Potaka, which have been very positive as this is an evidence-based agency. We’ve proven ourselves, and the Budget is an indication of that.”
The continued funding meant that “We can continue to work at our current level supporting people through these challenging times.”
A few weeks later, when news broke that Te Puni Kōkiri was suddenly putting Whānau Ora funding up for retender, Tamihere’s sunny assessment of his relationship with the government soured. He complained to Waatea News on July 2 that the rug was being ripped out from underneath his organisation with no consultation about a policy shift.
“You have to give your people out on the street [the] knowledge they can contract with their employees for consecutive years. You’ve got to give confidence to the people you are contracting with that they can take leaseholds, buy cars, buy devices, buy laptops to make their work work in communities, and you’ve got to give them certainty.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer also complained in an op-ed in the NZ Herald the next day that the news had “materialised over the past week without warning or discussion and, as I understand it, the Minister for Whānau Ora, Tama Potaka, was also caught off-guard”.
Such a sudden and unexpected move after the government had confirmed on May 30 that Whānau Ora’s work “would continue until 2027” lacked “goodwill, transparency and honesty”. She demanded that Potaka “provide evidence and a copy of the government’s policy changes and rationale” and that he sit down for consultation with Tamihere’s organisation, which “so many whānau have come to rely on, internally and externally”.
Political commentator Haimona Gray, who has previously worked for WOCA, viewed Ngarewa-Packer’s article as plainly lobbying for the Waipareira Trust, which he described in a column as “Te Pāti Māori’s largest single donor”. However, he thought the op-ed might be counter-productive as it could be seen as “a tacit acknowledgment of the overly close relationship between Te Pāti Māori and the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency that has gotten both parties into trouble with the public in the first place.”
Tamihere, of course, is Te Pāti Māori’s President and Raukawa-Tait was the eighth-placed candidate on the party list for last year’s election.
Whānau Ora was a Māori Party initiative set up by Tariana Turia in 2010 when she was a minister in John Key’s coalition government. As a result, the party has been very possessive of the programme. Certainly, its MPs have been very keen to find out why the decision to put Whānau Ora funds up for retender has been made.
Ngarewa-Packer asked Potaka in a parliamentary Written Question in mid-July: “What advice, if any, has the Minister or his office received about the process of retendering Whānau Ora contracts since 1 June 2024, by title and date?”
Potaka sidestepped the issue, declaring it was “an operational matter, led by Te Puni Kōkiri as the administering department”.
In September, Willie Jackson — who could sometimes be mistaken for a Te Pāti Māori sleeper agent in the Labour Party — asked Potaka in Parliament’s Estimates Debate in September whether the government’s “needs not race” policy meant “non-Māori providers like the Salvation Army will now become Whānau Ora providers?”
Potaka emphasised the government was indeed committed to “needs not race” and reminded Jackson that, despite his concerns about “non-Māori providers”, one of the three current commissioning agencies, Pasifika Futures, is, in fact, led by Debbie Sorensen, who is Tongan.
In October, Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi again raised the spectre of the Salvation Army in Parliament. She asked Potaka: “What is his response to Whānau Ora providers who are concerned that they will now have to compete with the likes of the Salvation Army for alternative funding as a result of the uncertainty he has created?”
Potaka advised Kapa-Kingi that the government had to “ensure that we have value for money in the delivery of better public services” and, “after 10 years of no formal procurement process, we thought it was important to undertake an engagement and procurement process for Whānau Ora — especially in light of the new targets, priorities, and objectives of this government”.
Overall, Potaka’s responses have done little to offer the commissioning agencies — or the public — compelling reasons for such a very abrupt policy change. However, as Haimona Gray put it, there is “reasonable speculation that the current commissioning agencies [are being] reviewed given repeated public scandals coming from only one of the three”.
At the beginning of June, shortly after the Budget had been presented, whistle-blowers alleged that the Manurewa Marae, Waipareira Trust and Te Pāti Māori misused vaccination, Census, and enrolment data, as well as offering inducements to voters to switch from the general to the Māori roll.
Coincidentally or otherwise, news of the retender appeared out of the blue later that month.
The results of the official investigations into the marae are due to be made public in late January. Decisions on who will get Whānau Ora cash will be decided in February, with the new roster of commissioning agencies expected to be operating by July 1. In other words, it looks as if the funding for the three current commissioning agencies is secure only until the next Budget.
• Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu works with whānau and families in the South Island.
• The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (also called Te Pou Matakana) covers the North Island.
• Pasifika Futures is dedicated to working with Pacific families across the country.
The agencies serve, in effect, as intermediaries between the government’s Whānau Ora funding programme and the myriad of community-based health and social support providers that they engage as partners.
A significant portion of the more than $180 million the government allocates to the Whānau Ora programme goes to the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) that Tamihere heads as its Chief Executive, with his wife, Awerangi Tamihere, as Chief Operating Officer. It covers social, health and education services for whānau across the entire North Island.
One of its shareholders is the social services charity Te Whānau O Waipareira Trust, which is also run by Tamihere as CEO, and again with his wife as Chief Operating Officer. It is based in West Auckland and helped promote the Census and the Covid-19 vaccination drive — including through South Auckland’s Manurewa Marae, which also served as a polling booth for 2023’s election.
The Waipareira Trust and WOCA are both headquartered at the same West Auckland address and share administrative and back-office support. By all accounts, it would be difficult to manoeuvre a cigarette paper between them. Indeed, in the trust’s 2023-24 Annual Report, WOCA’s chair, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, described their relationship as “indivisible” and praised the trust as “pivotal to our success, and our ability to be ground breakers of authentic Whānau Ora services”.
However, just how much longer WOCA will be able to fund the same level of “authentic Whānau Ora services” has suddenly become an open question that won’t be answered until next month.
On May 31, Tamihere was celebrating the confirmation in the previous day’s Budget that total Whānau Ora funding would have a slight increase from $181.7 million to $182.3m for the coming fiscal year.
Describing his relationship with the government as “strong”, Tamihere said: “I’ve had many interactions with our Whānau Ora Minister, Tama Potaka, which have been very positive as this is an evidence-based agency. We’ve proven ourselves, and the Budget is an indication of that.”
The continued funding meant that “We can continue to work at our current level supporting people through these challenging times.”
A few weeks later, when news broke that Te Puni Kōkiri was suddenly putting Whānau Ora funding up for retender, Tamihere’s sunny assessment of his relationship with the government soured. He complained to Waatea News on July 2 that the rug was being ripped out from underneath his organisation with no consultation about a policy shift.
“You have to give your people out on the street [the] knowledge they can contract with their employees for consecutive years. You’ve got to give confidence to the people you are contracting with that they can take leaseholds, buy cars, buy devices, buy laptops to make their work work in communities, and you’ve got to give them certainty.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer also complained in an op-ed in the NZ Herald the next day that the news had “materialised over the past week without warning or discussion and, as I understand it, the Minister for Whānau Ora, Tama Potaka, was also caught off-guard”.
Such a sudden and unexpected move after the government had confirmed on May 30 that Whānau Ora’s work “would continue until 2027” lacked “goodwill, transparency and honesty”. She demanded that Potaka “provide evidence and a copy of the government’s policy changes and rationale” and that he sit down for consultation with Tamihere’s organisation, which “so many whānau have come to rely on, internally and externally”.
Political commentator Haimona Gray, who has previously worked for WOCA, viewed Ngarewa-Packer’s article as plainly lobbying for the Waipareira Trust, which he described in a column as “Te Pāti Māori’s largest single donor”. However, he thought the op-ed might be counter-productive as it could be seen as “a tacit acknowledgment of the overly close relationship between Te Pāti Māori and the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency that has gotten both parties into trouble with the public in the first place.”
Tamihere, of course, is Te Pāti Māori’s President and Raukawa-Tait was the eighth-placed candidate on the party list for last year’s election.
Whānau Ora was a Māori Party initiative set up by Tariana Turia in 2010 when she was a minister in John Key’s coalition government. As a result, the party has been very possessive of the programme. Certainly, its MPs have been very keen to find out why the decision to put Whānau Ora funds up for retender has been made.
Ngarewa-Packer asked Potaka in a parliamentary Written Question in mid-July: “What advice, if any, has the Minister or his office received about the process of retendering Whānau Ora contracts since 1 June 2024, by title and date?”
Potaka sidestepped the issue, declaring it was “an operational matter, led by Te Puni Kōkiri as the administering department”.
In September, Willie Jackson — who could sometimes be mistaken for a Te Pāti Māori sleeper agent in the Labour Party — asked Potaka in Parliament’s Estimates Debate in September whether the government’s “needs not race” policy meant “non-Māori providers like the Salvation Army will now become Whānau Ora providers?”
Potaka emphasised the government was indeed committed to “needs not race” and reminded Jackson that, despite his concerns about “non-Māori providers”, one of the three current commissioning agencies, Pasifika Futures, is, in fact, led by Debbie Sorensen, who is Tongan.
In October, Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi again raised the spectre of the Salvation Army in Parliament. She asked Potaka: “What is his response to Whānau Ora providers who are concerned that they will now have to compete with the likes of the Salvation Army for alternative funding as a result of the uncertainty he has created?”
Potaka advised Kapa-Kingi that the government had to “ensure that we have value for money in the delivery of better public services” and, “after 10 years of no formal procurement process, we thought it was important to undertake an engagement and procurement process for Whānau Ora — especially in light of the new targets, priorities, and objectives of this government”.
Overall, Potaka’s responses have done little to offer the commissioning agencies — or the public — compelling reasons for such a very abrupt policy change. However, as Haimona Gray put it, there is “reasonable speculation that the current commissioning agencies [are being] reviewed given repeated public scandals coming from only one of the three”.
At the beginning of June, shortly after the Budget had been presented, whistle-blowers alleged that the Manurewa Marae, Waipareira Trust and Te Pāti Māori misused vaccination, Census, and enrolment data, as well as offering inducements to voters to switch from the general to the Māori roll.
Coincidentally or otherwise, news of the retender appeared out of the blue later that month.
The results of the official investigations into the marae are due to be made public in late January. Decisions on who will get Whānau Ora cash will be decided in February, with the new roster of commissioning agencies expected to be operating by July 1. In other words, it looks as if the funding for the three current commissioning agencies is secure only until the next Budget.
It is believed that fresh contenders — possibly including the nationwide network of existing iwi Māori partnership boards — have thrown their hats into the ring and it seems inevitable that Tamihere’s wings will at least be clipped in the retender given that two commissioning agencies will be funded for the North Island, rather than a single operator as at present.
Te Puni Kōkiri announced in October that it “aims to procure Whānau Ora commissioning agency services in four regions. It is intended that there will be two regions in Te Ikaa-Māui | North Island and one in Te Waipounamu | South Island. A fourth ‘region’ will meet the needs of Pasifika across Aotearoa New Zealand.”
Te Puni Kōkiri announced in October that it “aims to procure Whānau Ora commissioning agency services in four regions. It is intended that there will be two regions in Te Ikaa-Māui | North Island and one in Te Waipounamu | South Island. A fourth ‘region’ will meet the needs of Pasifika across Aotearoa New Zealand.”
Some have suggested that this reshuffle resembles a classic management tactic where a significant role within a company is disestablished and rejigged in order to force the incumbent to reapply for a less important and less lucrative role that they might not even want, or ultimately get.
In her Herald op-ed, Ngarewa-Packer asserted that Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency “has passed every financial audit in the past five years – which are signed off by KPMG — and is regularly audited by Te Puni Kōkiri. It has been investigated by the Auditor-General and he reported that [it] achieved 100% of its key performance indicators consequent upon his review.”
However, she noted, “These reviews are done not on money but on the quality of their programmes around the country.”
Unfortunately for her, Te Pāti Māori and Tamihere, the public’s focus has now fallen squarely on the generous amounts of taxpayers’ money dispensed and how they have been spent, or hoarded. What has raised eyebrows is that the Waipareira Trust’s annual report for the year to June 2024 shows net assets of nearly $104 million (more than double the total four years ago).
Its net annual surplus reached a record $20.6 million (or 24 per cent of revenue), and the group now holds over $75 million in cash and cash equivalents. Its annual revenues — largely from Whānau Ora funding, and health contracts — were $85.8 million.
As David Farrar remarked on X: “The Waipareira Trust should list on the NZ Stock Exchange. Their profit margins and asset growth are higher than most NZX companies.”
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published HERE
In her Herald op-ed, Ngarewa-Packer asserted that Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency “has passed every financial audit in the past five years – which are signed off by KPMG — and is regularly audited by Te Puni Kōkiri. It has been investigated by the Auditor-General and he reported that [it] achieved 100% of its key performance indicators consequent upon his review.”
However, she noted, “These reviews are done not on money but on the quality of their programmes around the country.”
Unfortunately for her, Te Pāti Māori and Tamihere, the public’s focus has now fallen squarely on the generous amounts of taxpayers’ money dispensed and how they have been spent, or hoarded. What has raised eyebrows is that the Waipareira Trust’s annual report for the year to June 2024 shows net assets of nearly $104 million (more than double the total four years ago).
Its net annual surplus reached a record $20.6 million (or 24 per cent of revenue), and the group now holds over $75 million in cash and cash equivalents. Its annual revenues — largely from Whānau Ora funding, and health contracts — were $85.8 million.
As David Farrar remarked on X: “The Waipareira Trust should list on the NZ Stock Exchange. Their profit margins and asset growth are higher than most NZX companies.”
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published HERE
7 comments:
Why is an increase in funding been required when assets and cash on hand have been increasing for 4 years?Who's heads are going to roll ?And reversal of funding?
Where is the hard evidence of :"The continued funding meant that “We can continue to work at our current level supporting people through these challenging times.”
And all that cash amassed and hoarded from the taxpayer's purse, yet all the while, JT, his wife, and immediate rellies have been on very generous salaries to boot. Just another gravy train (or unaccounted Treaty settlement?) associated with interests of a very particular cohort of society and another example of how easy it is to be financially successful if you are Govt funded and don't have to be concerned with paying your fair share of tax. Then some wonder why the Govt's cupboard is bare and our economy isn't performing. Go figure?
"Debbie Sorenson, who is Tongan". Why do we not have New Zealanders administering government funds for the benefit of people who choose and have been allowed to live in New Zealand. Is Tonga becoming another established country within New Zealand?
I see Haimona Gray has tweeted in response to the column:
"2024 was only 'act one' of a three act epic. 2025 brings the second act and the pathway towards a very satisfying conclusion. That's about all I can say for now..."
The "storm clouds" will morph into a gentle zephyr, with "nothing to see here".
Immoral at best, illegal at worst.
Can the Government recover any of the funding ?
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