By KEVIN TAYLOR AND NZPA
Act leader Richard Prebble has criticised the amount of time it is taking for the authorities to finish investigating the affairs of suspended Act MP Donna Awatere Huata.
His call for investigations by the Serious Fraud Office and Auditor-General to be finished quickly came after fresh
allegations into the spending of money earmarked for the Pipi Foundation.
Mrs Awatere Huata first faced allegations relating to the foundation late last year when the Dominion-Post alleged she and her family misused public money given to the body, which ran a children's reading programme she designed.
Yesterday the newspaper published new claims that she had used money earmarked for the foundation to pay boarding fees to two top Hawkes Bay schools, Woodford House and Iona College.
It is the latest in a series of claims made against Mrs Awatere Huata and the foundation, which was given $800,000 of mostly Education Ministry funding, to run a four-minute reading programme for schoolchildren struggling to read.
Her husband Wi Huata, called the latest allegations "bullshit" and said they appeared to have come from a former foundation employee who had been found guilty of theft and fraud.
Mrs Awatere Huata, a mother of seven, said the newspaper's reporter had sunk to a new low and crossed a line by attacking her children. The story was "defamatory and utterly contemptible".
Asked why she had not already taken a defamation case she cited the cost of legal fees in other seemingly "open and shut" cases.
But she said she was not ruling out legal action and would meet her lawyer next week.
The Serious Fraud Office declined to comment yesterday on how long its investigation might take. Assistant Auditor-General Terry McLaughlin also declined to comment.
In June Mrs Awatere Huata's suspension from Act's caucus was extended until the end of December to await the outcome of the probes.
