No news cuts out the bad news

Rongo Wetere looks relaxed at home, but his confidence has taken a battering. Picture / Amos Chapple

For a man whose name and organisation have dominated the headlines this week, Te Wananga o Aotearoa chief executive Rongo Wetere seems remarkably relaxed.

Slouched in an armchair in the lounge of the three-bedroom home he shares with his American fiancee, Marcia Krawll, Mr Wetere seems undaunted by the criticism.

But he has stopped reading the newspaper and watching the news as allegations of financial mismanagement, nepotism and extravagance have played out across the media.

Mr Wetere admits the week has been one of the toughest in his 22 years driving the creation of a Maori-based tertiary provider.

The continued attacks, made under parliamentary privilege, have eroded his confidence.

His eyes mist over at times as he reflects on the wananga's journey from a corrugated-iron shed on a former dump to being the country's largest tertiary education provider.

His idea of providing training for the high number of Te Awamutu Maori dropping through education gaps has grown into a educator of almost 65,000 students a year. 

Twenty-three years working as an insurance salesman turning over $3 million in contracts annually and nine years as chairman of the fractious Maniapoto Maori Trust Board prepared him for the political environment he was entered when setting up the wananga.

But the then-43-year-old father of three with a knack for fundraising, honed as chairman of Te Awamutu's Lions, was shocked by the resistance he met.

The town is conservative, he says, and there was not much enthusiasm for Maori

"I took a lot of flack. We are talking in the '80s - times have changed.

"Back then just 1 to 1.5 per cent of all tertiary students were Maori, despite making up more than 20 per cent of school-leavers.

"We have serviced more than 200,000 students in the past four years, a large number who would not have been part of the tertiary sector."

Criticism through the media has made it hard to attract high-calibre staff, says Mr Wetere, but he is adamant his children have been placed in senior positions within the organisations because of their ability.

"My daughter has a masters in education. My son came from a management background for a major corporate."

Mr Wetere's salary package is worth $245,000.

"I did not do this for the money.

"I know what my earning potential was at AMP.

"In those days, as a gold-ribbon writer [selling more than $3 million in policies a year] I was earning more than [then-Prime Minister Sir Robert] Muldoon."

Mr Wetere left AMP in 1989 after spending seven years labouring to get the wananga off the ground.

He now runs an education system where only 5 per cent of the students pay fees.

Forty per cent of the students on the Maori language course are Pakeha.

Mr Wetere is not fluent in te reo, which in part motivates him to teach the language. "I am not fluent - I am too damn busy to learn. I get by."

He believes problems that have plagued the organisation are the result of breaking new ground and meteoric growth.

The revelations in Parliament this week are in most cases untrue, or not new, he says.

"We have had six audits in the past 18 months. We are the most audited organisation in the country." The wananga was privately owned until 2002, when a Treaty of Waitangi claim, seeking Government support, was finally paid.

Mr Wetere said $60 million was agreed, and $40 million had been paid so far.

"We have had a vision over all these years, to be the biggest and the best, and I won't give up."