Employing relatives justified says Turia

Maori Party leader Tariana Turia says nepotism is not a word that Maori use.

"We see it more as whanaungatanga [kinship]."

She said Maori organisations came under a great deal of scrutiny, so Maori tended to employ relatives who could do the job because they knew and trusted them.
And she said there had been a failure to recognise the good that Te Wananga o Aotearoa had achieved.

Mrs Turia was commenting in the wake of claims made in Parliament last week about the Te Awamutu-based tertiary educational institution.

Act MP Ken Shirley said that a car-grooming contract for the wananga's 350 cars was won untendered by the partner of its deputy chief executive officer, and that the wananga bought a course from the daughter of chief executive Rongo Wetere and another from his fiancee.

Mrs Turia said she had worked with a lot of relatives when she was the chief executive of her iwi health authority.

"When you are running a Maori organisation you know you are always under scrutiny so you are going to put people into positions who you know that you can trust and who are going to be loyal and who can do the work.

"You certainly wouldn't put a relative of yours into a job you knew they couldn't do.

"But I would be looking not only for the expertise but the loyalty and I would be looking for that trust."

Mrs Turia was not sure about the latest allegations levelled at Te Wananga o Aotearoa, but said it had undergone many audits in recent years.

"If you went to any organisation at all and delved into its workings, be it a university or whatever, I think we could probably find some flaws in all of them."

And there had been a failure to recognise the good the wananga had done - more than 200,000 students have taken courses with it in the past four years.

"I have seen huge changes in some families just through their engagement with the wananga and it gives our kids hope," Mrs Turia said.

"If you come from a family that has never had any tertiary study whatsoever and suddenly you see your parents or your older brothers or sisters participating, it doesn't matter at what level, it suddenly gives you that goal that you can do that too," she said.

There might be some anomalies and she would wait and see the outcome on that.

"But they've done far more good than the criticisms that have been made of them."

Mrs Turia said the wananga took off after the Government systematically closed almost all of the Maori private training institutions, which had provided a level of learning before tertiary.