Trust board inquiry 'the starting point'

Te Runanga Nui o Te Aupouri acknowledged completion of the ministerial inquiry into the affairs of the Aupouri Maori Trust Board at an iwi hui in Te Kao almost two weeks ago.

But the impact of the issues that prompted the inquiry will be felt for some years to come, according to runanga chairman Rick Witana.

Former Aupouri Maori Trust Board members had presented an executive summary of the inquiry report, which raised a number of "worrying" governance and managerial practices, and poor decision-making by the trust, to the December 12 hui.

The trust board was disestablished on Thursday, when the Te Aupouri settlement legislation took effect, Mr Witana saying it now fell to Te Runanga Nui o Te Aupouri to work through the inquiry findings and consolidate the financial affairs of the iwi.

"We as a runanga have inherited a set of circumstances not of our own making, and though the inquiry provides a starting point, it does not resolve a number of the key post-settlement challenges we now face," Mr Witana said.

"Te Aupouri has been waiting for settlement legislation to be enacted for almost four years since a settlement agreement was signed with the government, and quite rightly our people are generally pretty annoyed about what has happened. The former trust board continued expanding and operating in an unsustainable way, even though it wasn't meeting its statutory reporting requirement to the Minister or reporting to our iwi.

"The losses are significant, between $1.5 and $3 million, and this will have an immediate impact on what we can do and can't do for Te Aupouri over the next five years in our planning.

"Our focus remains firmly fixed on the future, however the current settlement requirements are also not fully resolved by this report, so there is still a lot more to be done, he said.

"We will work our way carefully through the findings of the Minister's inquiry and what is a complicated set of responsibilities to understand what the rnanga has to resolve."

But while Te Aupouri might be down, it was by no means out, he said.

"We will learn from this experience, and enter the next phase in our development as an iwi with a renewed determination to achieve meaningful outcomes that improve the lives of our people," Mr Witana said.

"We're meeting again with the Minister in the New Year to discuss how our settlement is affected by the findings of this report," he said.

"We look forward to continuing to work closely with him to resolve any outstanding issues so we can help realise the opportunities that the Te Aupouri Treaty settlement offered our people."

The ministerial inquiry into the trust board, the result of which was released earlier this week, had found no evidence of fraud or criminal activity, Maori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell said.

He said while he was pleased that that was the case, the report, by a partner at financial services company Ernst and Young, had confirmed that the board was insolvent (Northland Age December 22).

He declined to comment further until he had heard back from the iwi, which was still considering the report.

In August Mr Flavell said he believed the board's financial troubles were the result of poor decisions, rather than fraud, but he would leave that to the investigation to determine.