Auditor-General to probe National's Pipi decision

By AUDREY YOUNG

The 1999 National Cabinet decision to award Pipi Foundation funding to promote Donna Awatere Huata's reading programme is likely to come under the scrutiny of the Auditor-General's inquiry.

So, too, is the level of monitoring by the Ministry of Education in the past three years of the Labour-led Government.

The Auditor-General's office last night released its terms of reference into its inquiry on whether the Act MP was involved in inappropriate spending of public money.

It will first identify the funding arrangements between public entities and organisations with which Mrs Awatere Huata is associated and/or has an interest in.

The inquiry will "examine the process by which the funding decision in each case was made, including whether a contestable process was or ought reasonably to have been used".

It will also look at whether the obligations were met and at the effectiveness of monitoring.

The MP is embroiled in allegations that she and the Pipi Foundation misused money that was intended for remedial reading.

One of the trustees admitted last week that the foundation funded Mrs Awatere Huata and her husband, Wi, to attend a fashion show in Sydney.

Among its trustees was Mrs Awatere Huata's mother-in-law.

The Act board wants the MP's resignation and has asked the caucus to suspend her at its meeting next Monday for failing to give detailed explanations to that and a litany of allegations.

She has cited legal advice for her silence.

The original funding to the foundation for $250,000 a year was made by a National Cabinet in 1999.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard stopped funding for this financial year and said the National Cabinet directive went "across the normal process".

He said yesterday that police opinion had been involved in the decision to freeze the funding and that, although he had not had contact with the police, "the ministry would not raise with me the possibility of withholding [funding] without consultation as to the police's preference".

Mrs Awatere Huata yesterday again refused to comment on any specific allegations about her spending.

But she said had the support of grassroots members of Act to stay in Parliament.

Asked how she could stay as an MP when the party that put her in Parliament no longer had confidence in her, she said she was still loyal to the principles of Act policies.

Meanwhile, Act MP Stephen Franks has distanced himself from comments made to the Herald suggesting Maori might have different standards of accountability.

He said he regretted the comments.

"I was putting it in a context of other incidents and parliamentary behaviour but it is unfair for it to be tied together with Donna."