Editorial: Experiment needs to win respect

Opinion

The country has waited nearly a year and half for the report of the Audit Office inquiry into Te Wananga o Aotearoa. It may wait a while longer for a measure of confidence that a bold experiment in education is being managed to the proper standards of public finance. The report presented to Parliament yesterday concludes, "There has been no misappropriation of money, nor fraud and no nepotism" though it identifies conflicts of interest and inappropriate uses of taxpayers' funds.

The office criticises contracts worth tens of millions of dollars given to companies owned by or employing 17 close relatives of the chief executive, Rongo Wetere, and finds the institution lacked sufficient checks on international travel and credit card use. It was given no documentation detailing, for example, why Dr Wetere made a $73,000 trip to Cuba in 2002.

The office says the institution made poor financial decisions, such as the 2003 purchase of Hamilton's Glenview Tavern, which has cost the Wananga $14.4 million though it was recently valued at $10 million.

Dr Wetere, who took the extraordinary step of releasing the Audit Office report on Monday, the day before it was to be tabled in the House, blithely admits that "mistakes were made". These, he says, have been corrected and he has no intention of stepping down. He attributes the management faults to the institution's rapid growth over the past five years.

Rapid growth it certainly had. Founded as a small, second-chance education service in Te Awamutu, it expanded in five years to be the largest tertiary institute in the country with 63,000 enrolled students. Most were on part-time or short courses and more than 12,000 never went near a lecture room. They were sent audio and video tapes on work skills and given free cellphones to keep in touch with tutors who would also visit them at home.

The theory was (and is) that tertiary education could be taken to people who could not or would not otherwise get it. The country's three wananga are credited with lifting Maori participation in tertiary education from below the national average to 23 per cent of Maori aged 15 and over, which is nearly double the proportion of Pakeha in tertiary studies.

But the largest, Te Wananga o Aotearoa, has expanded far beyond its Maori education brief - Maori comprise only half its enrolments this year - and its budget has ballooned from $4 million to almost $240 million in five years.

There is enough in the Audit Office findings to support the Act Party's frequent accusations that the wananga was operating in a "culture of extravagance and waste".

All that has changed, says the council of the wananga, which has installed a new executive and reassessed courses for their value. The constant criticism had its effect on enrolments this year and the institution was practically insolvent, needing a $20 million Government bail-out. The Government has taken steps to check the institution's spending, to reduce its scale and have it concentrate on services to Maori.

But Dr Wetere is fighting to keep his position and until that issue is resolved by the Employment Tribunal the wananga's future seems in the balance. He has several times made it evident he would sooner see the institution go down than surrender to greater Crown control.

To Maori such as Dr Wetere, the wananga has a degree of autonomy sanctioned by the Treaty of Waitangi. But it relies on public funds and therefore has to assure Parliament and the country it is putting the money to proper use. The Audit Office report confirms how far it has fallen short of ordinary standards and how much it must do to gain public respect.