Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and Mike King announce a $24 million boost for Gumboot Friday. Video / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Bryce Edwards
Bryce Edwards is a lecturer in Politics at Victoria University
A Bryce Edwards column published by the Herald on October 11 about the Auditor General’s report into Gumboot Friday stated that questions had been raised about the independence and methodology of ImpactLab, a business chaired by Sir Bill English. The Herald and Dr Edwards retract these statements and apologise for them.
Should Government ministers be able to dole out money to anyone they want? Or should proper rules be followed when disbursing taxpayer funds?
According to a landmark condemnation from the Auditor-General this week, the politicians need to follow the rules. The watchdog published a damning letter on Wednesday that he had sent to the Ministry of Health, chiding them for letting the Minister for Mental Health, Matt Doocey, hand out $24 million to a charity closely connected with various political parties – Mike King’s Gumboot Fridays.
Decline of transparency, integrity and accountability in the public service
Auditor-General John Ryan says “transparency, integrity, accountability and value for money” need to be at the centre of how government agencies spend their money. Certainly, in the past, public money wasn’t just dished out to the mates of politicians. The public service was there to prevent such abuse of office. Officials have been tasked with ensuring proper procurement processes are followed.
That protection against corruption no longer appears to be so healthy. Basically, the Auditor-General says the way the public servants just handed out $24m to Mike King stinks. Therefore, his landmark telling-off of the Ministry of Health should be a real wake-up call about the state of the public service. The letter needs much more attention.
Politicians picking favourites
The scandal over the $24m given to the Gumboot Friday programme comes out of the closeness many politicians and political parties have to comedian and mental health advocate Mike King. Across the political spectrum, politicians have championed King’s unorthodox methods and tenacity in trying to turn around the blight of youth mental health illness. The fact that King has been something of an outsider, rejected by the health system, has made him a cause celebre.
Hence the last Labour Government gave $600,000 of funding to his Gumboot Friday programme in 2021 without any proper process. And then the new coalition Government agreed to provide King with even more money – giving Gumboot Friday $6m a year for four years to counsel young people.
Although there are many charities and social services providers that provide similar services to those of Gumboot Friday, these competing providers were locked out of consideration for the $24m fund. New Zealand First and the National Party decided against any advertised and open tendering process for this service in favour of just giving the funding straight to Mike King.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey, therefore, instructed the Ministry of Health to sign a contract with King’s charity. There was only a little pushback to this. The Treasury, for example, advised that providing the money to the charity would involve risks due to ignoring the procurement rules. The Health Ministry officials also pointed out to Doocey that such funding would not be compliant with public procurement rules.
However, health officials came up with a way around the rules – a legal loophole. In health contracts there’s a provision to “opt out” of the standard procurement processes for cases of specialist health services. Although this exemption wasn’t meant for the likes of Gumboot Friday, it meant officials were able to deliver what the Beehive wanted.
Auditor-General John Ryan. Photo / Controller and Auditor General
What the Auditor-General said
The letter from Auditor-General John Ryan essentially says the Ministry of Health was too eager to please, and officials should have pushed back against their minister. They should have explicitly told Doocey they couldn’t give the contract to King’s charity without breaking the rules. And regarding using the “opt-out” loophole, the Auditor-General says the ministry failed to give a “clear justification” for doing so.
The Auditor-General’s six-page letter contains one key part worth quoting at length. This is his list of the five things wrong with the procurement process:
The selection of the supplier and the amount of funding was decided without an open and transparent process
There was no opportunity for a fair, open or competitive procurement process
The funding for the new initiative was specific to a supplier, rather than to a broad policy initiative or to achieve a policy outcome
The limited analysis on whether it was appropriate to directly contract the supplier or whether the supplier was best placed to deliver the policy objective was done only after the decision to provide funding to the supplier had been made
The decision to opt-out of the rules took place after the decision to engage the supplier and without clear justification of why an opt-out was appropriate.
The letter acknowledges officials were “put in a difficult position” because they were directed by their minister to dole out the money to Gumboot Friday. But the Auditor-General simply doesn’t believe officials pushed back hard enough: “the documents I have seen do not reassure me that the full range of risks associated with the procurement were communicated to ministers”.
The main firepower of the Auditor-General’s letter was directed at the officials in the Ministry of Health. And there’s no doubt they deserve the lambast.
But are the politicians getting off too lightly? The Herald’s Audrey Young thinks so, complaining the Auditor-General has slammed the wrong group: “The Auditor-General has eschewed any criticism of the politicians or coalition agreements themselves, effectively saying they are out of bounds. That is letting them off the hook. Someone with independence and oversight should be telling the politicians why such promises are problematic to good practice. If not the Auditor-General, then who?”
Matt Doocey has gone to ground this week and has not been interviewed on the Auditor-General’s finding (Doocey’s office says he was on “personal leave and was therefore unable to be interviewed”). Instead he put out a statement, blaming officials: “While the decision to fund Gumboot Friday was a decision made by the Government, how this commitment was implemented was a decision for the Ministry of Health. Throughout the process, the minister has sought, and received assurance from officials that the implementation option chosen by the Ministry of Health is compliant with government procurement rules.”
As Young rightly comments, the minister’s attempt to blame officials is “galling”.
Mike King with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey after the pre-Budget announcement of a $24 million boost for Gumboot Friday in May. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National Party connections to Gumboot Friday
The Auditor-General’s report only dealt with the Ministry of Health’s role in the procurement process for Gumboot Friday. However, there are still other concerns about the funding.
The problem is that Gumboot Friday is run by the I Am Hope charity, which is increasingly viewed as a National Party charity. The chief executive who was running the charity for much of the time of the controversy was Troy Elliott, a National Party activist, who has been keen to become a National MP (following in the footsteps of his father, who had been in Parliament).
The new chairwoman of the charity is Naomi Ballantyne, who has been a financial donor to National in recent years. During the 2020 election year, she donated $20,600 to the party; last year, she made three further donations totalling $6840. She made her fortune in the life insurance industry.
Of course, in contrast to Gumboot Friday getting $24m, we have learned this week that David Letele’s South Auckland foodbank is having to close at Christmas this year due to a lack of Government support. Letele is also something of a popular figure in political circles, with his innovative achievements incredibly respected. However, he doesn’t seem to be very close to any of the parties that are currently in power.
The unfortunate lesson for the charity sector therefore seems to be: it’s not what you do, it’s who you know.
Mike King responds to this column:
Bryce Edwards fancies himself a detective, stringing together loose facts to spin a narrative that fits his preferred headline: “Comedian-turned-crook fools politicians into giving him $24 million.” It’s flattering - thinking I have the power to trick three political parties into handing me millions - but it’s pure fiction. What’s more amusing is Edwards framing this as a grand conspiracy, where my charity, Gumboot Friday, supposedly benefited from political favouritism and dodged procurement rules, all under my masterful control. If only I were that cunning.
Let’s get the facts straight. The Government didn’t hand $24m to me or to I Am Hope. They gave it to the Ministry of Health, which manages the fund and decides how it is allocated. Here’s how it works: the kids go online and pick one of over 500 counsellors available, we pay the counsellor, and once a month the ministry reimburses us, capped at $500,000 per month. Money young people and their loved ones are extremely grateful for. Here’s another fact Edwards conveniently overlooks: every cent goes to counsellors, with I Am Hope covering all admin and operating costs. We provide regular reports to the ministry to ensure complete transparency. The real story should read, “Charity gives 100% of government funds to kids in need”. Instead, we get, “Government hands $24 million to a controversial comedian.”
Edwards also takes a shot at my credibility by calling me a comedian, as though the current Government is handing money to clowns. If he’d done even basic research, he’d know I haven’t performed comedy in over a decade. But why let facts get in the way of a good story, right?
The article leans heavily on the idea that we bypassed the procurement process, robbing other charities of funding. Here’s another fact-check: no other charity in New Zealand offers a national, free, face-to-face counselling service for young people aged 5 to 25, regardless of ethnicity or gender. I challenge Edwards to name just one. And while he claims we avoided procurement rules, we’ve never applied through the procurement process - not because we didn’t want to, but because there has never been an RFP put out to provide counselling for 5-25′s. If there had, we’d have gladly participated.
Edwards also pushes a narrative that Gumboot Friday is aligned with the National Party, pointing to people like Troy Elliott and Naomi Ballantyne. The facts? Troy Elliott wasn’t employed at I Am Hope when the current Government announced on The Rock their desire to fund Gumboot Friday, nor was he CEO when the contract was signed. As for Naomi Ballantyne, her personal donations to the National Party are just that - personal - and have nothing to do with our charity. But Edwards prefers to connect dots that don’t exist, spinning a conspiracy out of thin air.
The idea that Gumboot Friday operates without accountability is laughable. We’ve spent years proving that mental health care doesn’t need to be slow, expensive, or tied up in red tape. Under the previous government, a single counselling session cost on average $480 - most of it absorbed by admin costs. We cut out the middleman, and our average session costs just $150, with everything from counselling to psychiatric care included. If that’s not a sign of effectiveness, I don’t know what is.
Edwards further stokes the fire by comparing Gumboot Friday to David Letele’s foodbank, suggesting that we’ve been unfairly prioritised. This is part of the classic Kiwi pastime - tearing others down. Comparing a foodbank to a mental health service is like comparing apples to oranges. For the first 12 years, we ran our charity with zero government funding, relying entirely on the public to raise $13m. In all that time, I never threw shots at other charities or complained that they got funding while we didn’t. It has never been about the money for us. As I often say to those working in the sector: if you’re in it for the money, you’re in the wrong business - because there isn’t any.
Edwards also accuses me of leveraging my outsider status to gain political sympathy and funding, ignoring the fact that long before we received government support, we had the backing of everyday New Zealanders. Our success isn’t about political games; it’s about answering a desperate need that the system couldn’t meet.
At the heart of this story isn’t some grand conspiracy - it’s a grassroots movement filling the gap left by a failing health system. Gumboot Friday has never been about politics; it’s about ensuring kids get the help they need when they need it. But Edwards’ article follows the tired formula of twisting facts, turning unrelated events into scandals, and knocking down those working to make a difference. The real scandal isn’t that Gumboot Friday received funding - the real scandal is that the need was so great that we had to step in to begin with.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
