Probe launched into processes around That racist Nigger

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Nanaia Mahuta’s family members

Contracts awarded to family members of Labour minister Nanaia Mahuta are under scrutiny. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Contracts awarded to family members of Labour minister Nanaia Mahuta are under scrutiny. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Public service commissioner Peter Hughes is looking into the awarding of contracts to businesses associated with family members of Cabinet minister Nanaia Mahuta.

National Party spokesman for Public Services Simeon Brown first requested the commission investigate the matter in August, as details of a series of government contracts related to two companies owned by or related to Gannin Ormsby continued to emerge. Details of the first of such contracts were reported by the Herald in May.

Ormsby is Mahuta’s husband.

Mahuta was associate minister for three of the four agencies which awarded contracts to the Ormsby-related firms, though her spokesperson and agency officials have said she has not had purview over the areas of work covered in the family-related contracts.

The contract values total more than $230,000 (excluding GST) and were awarded to two consultancies in late 2020 and early 2021.

Three of the contracts were awarded for work on a sole source basis without competitive bids, the third was a grant.

Today Minister Mahuta said she also requested the probe and welcomed the development.

“It’s concerned me for some time that even though I have declared conflicts of interest and noted they have been managed in accordance with the Cabinet Manual, these stories are still persisting.”

She said it’s “very clear” that she had “no say in approving at contract level” and that she has been “assiduous” in declaring and managing potential conflicts.

The Public Service Commission’s (PSC) jurisdiction is over the public service and does not extend to ministers.

Mahuta said she raised her unease over the contracts with Chris Hipkins, Minister for Public Services, verbally on September 12 and subsequently wrote to him on September 19 to ask that the matter be scrutinised.

She was concerned about issues raised at a departmental level: “In at least three of the government departments, it is evident there is an inconsistent approach to the way conflicts of interest have been managed by them. That is a matter at departmental level. That’s why I’m pleased that the Public Services Commissioner is looking at this.”

In a written statement, Hughes noted that Hipkins’ request for a review formed part of the impetus for the undertaking.

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Hipkins’ letter to the PSC, released on Tuesday, mentioned the PSC’s limitation in investigating only public servants and it noted: “I have seen noting to suggest that any Minister has involved themselves in any of the contracts for services that have been identified. However, issues regarding agencies and procurement and conflict of interest processes continue to be raised and need to be resolved.”

Hughes’ review will look into contracts awarded both to Ormsby’s wholly owned consultancy, Ka Awatea Services, and to related companies.

Contracts awarded to consultancy Kawai Catalyst owned by Tamoko and Waimirirangi Ormsby (Gannin Ormsby’s nephew and his wife) will also form part of the probe.

The contentious contracts were awarded by Crown housing agency Kainga Ora, the Ministry for the Environment, the Department of Conservation and Te Puni Kokiri (the Ministry of Maori Development).

Local government is outside the commission’s jurisdiction; at least one local government body (Waikato Regional Council) has contracted KAS’ work in the last year.

Acting Prime Minister Grant Robertson said there’s “absolutely no suggestion that Minister Mahuta has done anything wrong, or indeed any other minister”.

Robertson said it was important more generally to ensure the public sector was on top of handling conflict of interest issues.

“There are government agencies who [sic] have been contracting with Minister Mahuta’s husband’s company, we want to make sure that we look at those processes that they are done properly. New Zealanders deserve that.”

Robertson said New Zealand was a small country and that “we have had these sorts of issues over many years with many different people”; he said some of the focus on Mahuta “has been unfair”.

Hipkins’ letter asked the watchdog to consider conflicts of interest, real and perceived, and also to “look across departments and agencies in the broader public service and satisfy yourself that agencies’ relationships with Ka Awatea and any of its associated business enterprises are in order…”

Hughes said he does not think the matter “reaches the threshold for an inquiry”, however, he will “look into the matters surrounding the four agencies and I have also agreed to the Minister’s request to look across the broader Public Service.”

Brown had asked for inquiries into the issue on August 29 and again on September 13 and welcomed the development.

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He said New Zealanders have a “right to know” how contracts were awarded to Ormsby and other relations when Mahuta was the Associate Minister for three of the four Ministries concerned.

He said he would have preferred a formal inquiry, but that he was “confident” the PSC has the tools it needs “to examine conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts”.

He said “public trust and confidence in our democracy and the public service is critical” and he would be looking to make sure the PSC’s work was “full and thorough”.

The PSC’s involvement comes on the heals of three individual agency reviews of contentious contracts, which are now either underway or complete.

Last week, the Ministry for the Environment released a review of the process by which it awarded some $90,000 of contracts to KAS and Kawai Catalyst.

The report found no political involvement by ministers; Nanaia Mahuta was Associate Minister for the Environment at the time the contract was awarded (she had no responsibility for the relevant area of work). However, the review enumerated a litany of deficiencies in the process by which the contracts were awarded.

DoC is reviewing a $52,000 (excluding GST) contract awarded to KAS in November 2020. A total of $11,800 (excluding GST) has been paid out on the contract, a consideration that contract documents released under OIA show was due “upon signing” and which show no stipulated deliverables.

Last week Housing Minister Megan Woods confirmed that Kainga Ora was deficient in its conflict of interest process in awarding KAS a $66,846 (excluding GST) contract.

A grant of $28,300 was made to KAS by Te Puni Kokiri from a suicide prevenion fund in April, 2021; no expertise in the area of suicide prevention was stipulated to deliver the related project.

Apartheid NZ, more international embarrassment

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New Zealand’s mainstream media has finally named the elephant in the room. Late last month, the nation’s biggest newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, published an opinion piece that claimed a coup is under way in New Zealand by the Maori tribal elite.

The article, written by former Labour minister and ACT Party leader Richard Prebble, was widely circulated and commented on, including by the state broadcaster RadioNZ.

His column focused mainly on the government’s plan to confiscate the water assets of the nation’s 67 councils and hand their governance to an equal number of unelected tribal members and council representatives.

The deeply unpopular asset-confiscation program is known as Three Waters – drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater.

The headline of Prebble’s read, Three Waters is a coup – an attack on democracy.

Unfortunately for the government – and Nanaia Mahuta, the Minister of Local Government who is driving the legislative change – the former Minister’s views cannot be easily dismissed. As an influential member of Cabinet during the revolutionary Labour government led by David Lange in the mid-80s, he has a unique political insight and his views carry weight.

Prebble noted that New Zealand is a ‘liberal democracy’ in which ‘individual rights and freedoms are officially recognised and protected … by the rule of law’. Governments, he said, are therefore ‘accountable to the people by a system of one person, one vote’.

‘Liberal democracy is incompatible with co-government by tribes,’ he concluded.

While he believes there may be some logic to the use of co-governance as a pragmatic solution to historic claims for the ownership of disputed public assets such as national parks, there is none for public services such as Three Waters:

‘It is ratepayers – Maori and non-Maori – who paid for the pipes, dams, stormwater drains, and sewage plants. The Government’s Three Waters legislation is a coup. It is replacing liberal democracy with co-government with iwi.’

Another voice that cannot be easily dismissed is that of Kaipara Mayor Dr Jason Smith, who was appointed by Minister Mahuta as a member of a working group established to mollify opponents of the reforms. He described Three Waters as ‘a Trojan Horse for ending democratic rights’.

The iwi elite driving the takeover are seeking comprehensive tribal rule by 2040. The plan to achieve this goal is outlined in a radical document called He Puapua, which was mapped out by the government in 2019, under the guise of enacting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The declaration was signed secretly in 2010 under the conservative National government of John Key, who assured the nation it was ‘non-binding’ and had largely symbolic significance.

Knowing how explosive He Puapua was, Jacinda Ardern barely mentioned it in Labour’s 2020 campaign manifesto. Even her Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, knew nothing about it before the election. It was only revealed after Ardern won a landslide victory.

By failing to gain the consent of voters for what looks like tribal rule (as they were never asked), Jacinda Ardern has no mandate for He Puapua co-governance agenda. It is completely illegitimate.

The government’s Office for Maori Crown Relations clarifies on its website where this tribal ‘partnership’ agenda is leading:

‘Maori decide and the Crown assists in implementing the decision made by Maori. The Crown’s role is as enabler and implementer, not a decision-maker.’

Hiding in plain sight, the website confirms for anyone still uncertain about the extent of the coup currently underway that the ultimate goal of the so-called ‘co-governance’ partnership agenda is, indeed, tribal rule.

As a result, the Prime Minister is embedding racial preference throughout our regulatory and legislative framework – from the Public Service and the conservation estate to schools and the entire science and research sector.

Enabling iwi to control health required new legislation to abolish the country’s 20 district health boards just as giving them control of water involves a bill to confiscate water infrastructure and services from all 67 councils.

That piece of legislation, the Water Services Entities Bill, passed its first reading in June with more than 88,000 public submissions lodged – most in opposition. Showing a deep disdain for democratic convention, the government is refusing to hear from most of the thousands of submitters who asked to be heard in person.

The scale and speed of the government’s cultural takeover is breathtaking, and it is reshaping democracy as we know it before our very eyes.

Professor Elizabeth Rata, the Director of Knowledge in Education at Auckland University, outlined the threat posed by this tribal coup in a recent address entitled In Defence of Democracy.

‘I want to talk about democracy – about what it is we are in danger of losing and what we need to do to retain our nation’s remarkable 170-year legacy of democratic governance…

‘The question we must ask is this: How has a small group of individuals, both Maori and non-Maori, managed to install a racialised ideology into our democracy?

‘The corporate tribes have already acquired considerable governance entitlements – the next and final step is tribal sovereignty. It is a coup d’etat in all but name, accomplished not by force but by ideology – enabled by a compliant media.’

And that’s the point.

The Prime Minister is using a well-orchestrated public media campaign to justify the transfer of control of major public resources and services from the Crown and thus, out of the hands of the people.

Using a $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, that’s only available to media who agree to ‘acknowledge’ and ‘promote’ the fabrication that underpins co-governance – that Maori are Treaty ‘partners’ with the Crown – without the full scrutiny of New Zealand’s Fourth Estate, this tribal coup is being progressed at pace.

Dr Muriel Newman is a former New Zealand Member of Parliament, who runs the public policy think tank the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at www.nzcpr.com