By FRAN O'SULLIVAN and SIMON COLLINS
Allegations of favouritism, waste and lack of accountability are enveloping a joint Government-Maori agency that has accumulated more than $300 million in cash and securities.
The Crown Forestry Rental Trust, chaired by New Zealand Maori Council chairman Sir Graham Latimer, is under fire for:
* Giving $5 million to the Volcanic Interior Plateau (VIP) group of Maori claimants whose legal adviser, Donna Hall, is also Sir Graham's longstanding lawyer.
* Giving $5.5 million to groups in the Kaipara district, where Sir Graham lives.
* Supporting a staff of 50, mainly in Wellington, and paying out only 37 per cent of its spending to the claimant groups it is supposed to help.
* Denying money to groups that have lodged cross-claims against VIP in the central North Island.
The trust is run by a small group in Wellington. Its close relationships are symbolised by its chief executive, Karen Waterreus, being a godmother of Hall's adopted baby, Kahu, whose kidnapping last month shocked the country.
But the trust's defenders say the money paid to VIP and the Kaipara groups is not disproportionate considering it paid a total of $43.2 million to all groups claiming former state forest land nationally in the 11 years to March last year.
Stung by the criticisms, Hall this week produced a letter from her accountants, Martin Jarvie, saying that her personal taxable income in the three years to March 2001 averaged "less than $180,000" a year - well short of the Sunday Star-Times "Rich List" estimate that she was worth $10 million.
"I know that Donna Hall is a very high-profile figure [especially] after the tragic events of the past fortnight," says Edward Te Kohu Douglas, an Aucklander who is part of the VIP research network.
"There are a lot of people who are tinged with the green of jealousy about how effective her advocacy is."
The Crown Forestry Rental Trust was created in 1990 after the Labour Government of the day proposed to sell the cutting rights to all state-owned plantation forests.
The Government agreed to keep the land under the forests, and pay the rent into the new trust until Maori claims to the land under the Treaty of Waitangi were settled .
The trust was required to invest the rents, and could use the interest to help Maori claimants to prepare for Waitangi Tribunal hearings into their claims to the land.
The trust deed stated: "It is expected that the tribunal will have heard most of the claims relating to forest land by the middle of 1992."
Ten years after that deadline passed, settlements have been agreed to in two big claims, Tainui and Ngai Tahu, and in 10 smaller claims. One of the biggest of the smaller claims was Te Uri o Hau in the Kaipara district, which was settledfor $15.6 million in 1999-2000.
But by 1999, there were still 101 claims in the biggest forestry region, the central North Island, on which virtually no progress had been made.
Labour MP John Tamihere, whose Maori Affairs select committee began an inquiry into the trust last year, says the probe was sparked by a "lack of frankness in regard to responses to us by the trustees and the chief executive".
He points to "huge discrepancies" in trust funding decisions, giving $5.5 million to Kaipara groups compared with only $5 million to date for the much bigger VIP claim.
Moreover, he says $800,000 of the $2 million given to VIP in 1999-2000 "went to lawyers". This included $433,800 for "policy, legal advice and project management", $268,606 for "Queen's counsel and senior counsel" and $109,968 for "professional fees and disbursements".
"The money should go to a research team. It's not a legalistic approach," he says.
But Sir Graham says the money paid to VIP was to speed up a settlement process that had been bogged down for years.
"The biggest claimants belong to the Volcanic Interior Plateau. They are the major claimants of the whole of the forests, and if you ignore the majority, you are in trouble.
"The Crown Forestry Rental Trust's job was to try to get people to the tribunal to settle their claims. So the VIP grew out of that."
He says he has always declared an interest when the trust has considered Hall's applications for finance, because of the many legal battles they had fought together.
"The only time Maoris ever win in this country is when they go to court," he says.
As for the Kaipara claims, he says: "I'm elected by the Kaipara people and the northern people to represent them, and I do that as best I possibly can, without allowing it to interfere with the rest of Maoridom.
He said few, if any, iwi with forestry claims could claim that they had not benefited from the trust.
He defends the trust's 50 staff, who do research benefiting all claims such as a recently completed project to record all Maori land transactions in the Rotorua district since 1860 on a computer database. Similar projects are planned for other districts.
"We could not continue to fund all the individual claimants. It was impossible for us to do that because we had 800-odd claims," he says. "We had to find a more efficient way."
The trust appointed one of its members, Professor Whatarangi Winiata, to try to bring the 101 claimants in the Volcanic Interior Plateau region together to "fast-track" the hearing process.
Key support came from the former Bishop of Aotearoa, Manuhuia Bennett, who chaired the VIP's "taumata" (leadership) group until he died last year. That role has now been taken by the ariki (paramount chief) of Taupo's Tuwharetoa people, Tumu Te Heuheu, who was also a founding member of the taumata.
Winiata and another Crown Forestry trustee, former Tourism Board chairman Peter Allport, also joined the taumata as a sign of trust support for the VIP.
Hall says a wider taumata group is now being finalised, including Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, Sir Howard Morrison and Mrs Pirihira Fenwick from the Rotorua region, Mrs Rangiuira Briggs, Anaru Te Amo and Nepia Williams from the Kaingaroa-Murupara area, and Tumu Te Heuheu, Mrs Ann Clark and one other still to be settled from the Taupo region.
As soon as VIP established that it had the support of 82 of the 101 claimant groups in the three regions, the Crown Forestry Rental Trust agreed to finance it. It gave $1.98 million in the year to March 2000, $3 million in the year to March last year, and Hall has applied for a further $3 million.
Rawiri Te Whare, the manager of the Kaingaroa Forest Village and one of VIP's management team of five directors, says VIP is unusual in spending only 31 per cent of its $2.4 million budget in the year to March 2001 on legal costs, including $387,731 to Hall and three staff solicitors in her Lower Hutt firm, Woodward Law Offices.
The other $1.6 million was spent mainly on a "communications team" of about 20 spread through the three claim districts. Their job is to keep the 82 claimant groups informed and to build up the groups' capacity to make best use of the huge sums that may come their way when claims are settled.
Those sums may easily surpass the $170 million payouts in the three biggest Waitangi settlements to date (Tainui, Ngai Tahu, Maori fisheries). The land value of the seven central North Island forests alone is $340 million, and VIP says those forests account for $160 million, or just over half, of the Crown Forestry Rental Trust's cash and securities.
On top of that, VIP seeks compensation for the fact that the forest land will be returned to them encumbered by cutting rights which have been sold to others.
Te Whare says the money will benefit about 100,000 Maori living in the three central regions, including 150 hapu(marae groups or subtribes).
"The ultimate goal is actually preparing our people for economic development."
Although many of the claims were lodged back in the 1980s, Hall says the Waitangi Tribunal had placed the central North Island 36th on a list of 36 districts, indicating that claims would not be heard until 2020.
The VIP initiative has pushed the region to the head of the queue. Rotorua claims are now due to be heard at the end of this year, Taupo claims next year and Kaingaroa-Murupara claims in 2004.
At the same time, Hall is lobbying cabinet ministers in the hope that an overall settlement may be reached directly this year, leaving the tribunal to mop up smaller claims for each hapu.
But VIP's very success has encouraged imitators. Te Whare says that since the VIP claim was lodged in August 1999, 59 new claims have sprung up in the three VIP districts.
"They came in as people began to realise that VIP was working towards priority of settlement."
In the same period, seven of VIP's original claimants have defected. This means VIP now represents only 75 claimants, or fewer than half of what are now 160 claims in the area.
One notable breakaway is Annette Sykes, whose Rotorua law firm Rangitauira & Co was paid $178,408 by VIP in the year to March 2001.
"We asked her to modify her way of operating," Te Whare says. "She is a strong supporter of Tino Rangatiratanga [Maori self-determination]. She has been consistent in her message in that regard.
"But in certain activities of VIP, we felt it was not appropriate that that discussion was to become part of our process."
Sykes now represents 26 claimants grouped under the banner of Nga Rauru o Nga Potiki, overlapping with VIP in the Matahina Forest and extending eastwards into the Urewera Ranges, including the Urewera National Park. Her group, formed last June, received $300,000 from the Crown Forestry Rental Trust in October.
"We have said it would be unfair that some groups are funded and others not," she says.
Another group, which has always stayed out of VIP, is Te Ika Whenua, led by former Maori Council chairman Maanu Paul, which represents several eastern Bay of Plenty groups It received $2.5 million from the trust in the 1990s, but has had nothing since VIP was formed.
"When we applied, we were told to go to VIP," Paul said. He claims that the trust has become a self-perpetuating bureaucracy and should be disbanded.
"They should tender it out to a public accountant in Rotorua to prepare the papers for the trust to meet once a month."
Another group, Ngati Manawa, left Te Ika Whenua to join VIP, but has now left VIP and plans to form its own runanga (council) next month. It has not sought trust finance until it can show that it has a mandate from its people.
'Huge discrepancies' in Maori trust's decisions, says Tamihere
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.