Wananga enrolment drops after criticism

Enrolments at Te Wananga o Aotearoa are down 30 per cent on last year after a month of constant criticism of the Te Awamutu-based tertiary provider.

Susan Cullen, daughter of chief executive Rongo Wetere, said recent accusations had cost the wananga about 10,000 students and was putting jobs at the country's largest tertiary provider at risk.

She said tertiary student numbers were down about 15 per cent nationally and were another 15 per cent lower at the wananga as a result of the allegations made against in Parliament.

ACT MP Ken Shirley has used parliamentary privilege to raise a number of allegations against the wananga, including nepotism, financial mismanagement, cronyism, poor course quality and dubious enrolment practices.

The allegations had resulted in a crown manager, Brian Roche, being appointed to the wananga and an auditor-general's investigation is under way.

Mrs Cullen -- who has been included in many of the allegations -- said she was a "sub-contractor" to the wananga as a supplier of education programmes and has helped her father voluntarily.

She was confident her family and the wananga would be cleared following the investigation but said someone should be held responsible for the losses the wananga and the Wetere family had suffered.

"Who is going to be responsible for the wananga's losses when this is all over?" she asked.

"We have done nothing corrupt, there are no backhanders, there is no nepotism ... we have been vetted and reviewed and audited many times and everything is up front. We have absolute integrity in all we have done -- this is not the same integrity level shown by the Government."

She sold the Mahi Ora education programme to the wananga in 2001 for $7 million and has denied there was anything underhand in the arrangement.

The transaction had been reported in two annual reports and been audited.

Mrs Cullen said the purchase price for the programme was settled on using normal commercial valuation practices.

"They bought my intellectual property, which at the time was responsible for 80 per cent of wananga revenue," she said.

Mrs Cullen said she and her husband Brett had invested the money in farms and property.

"What did you expect us to do with it -- sit on it?"

She said she was angry at the way the allegations had affected the institution she has watched her father build over the past 20 years.

Mrs Cullen said she was now considering forming her own political party if there was not a resolution to the accusations.

- NZPA