Editorial: Openness vital to Tainui's recovery

If Maori tribes are loath to discuss what they have done with Treaty of Waitangi settlements, it is somewhat understandable. They are witnessing the price being paid for failure by Tainui, the settlement trail-blazer. The tribe's financial performance could hardly be more abject; its wealth has not grown by one dollar since its $170 million settlement in 1995. As its beneficiaries grapple with the dismal outcome of misguided and extravagant investments, Tainui's public humiliation is complete. Is it any wonder, then, that other tribes should duck for cover, even if without exception they have made a better fist of settlements?

Some of those tribes make the point that Maori do not have to defend their handling of settlements; it is their private business. Quite so. Certainly, they should not be answerable to the Government or to the taxpayer. They and they alone have the right and responsibility to decide what happens to these full and final settlements for past wrongs.

Yet in their reticence, the tribes betray the kind of mindset that was at the nub of Tainui's downfall. There is danger that a conviction that outsiders have no business prying into a tribe's financial affairs may too easily metamorphose into a similar policy towards a tribe's beneficiaries.

A Herald investigation has found that Tainui's financial affairs were reported incompletely and highly selectively. Polish took the place of pith in annual reports, which lacked key information such as cashflow statements, explanatory notes to the accounts and statements of accounting policy. If tribal beneficiaries got to see the full accounts, it was under the most restrictive of circumstances. Only the accounts for 2000, completed under a new regime condemned by Tainui chief negotiator Sir Robert Mahuta, provide a clearer picture and reveal the extent of the financial crisis.

Full disclosure of accounts is essential if there is to be accountability for investment decisions. Sir Robert not only disregarded this basic corporate tenet but seems to have believed that he could, if necessary, act autocratically. In so doing, he highlighted a particular problem afflicting Tainui.

Essentially, Sir Robert draws his power from his adopted sister, the Maori Queen, in a feudalistic arrangement which sits oddly with the democratic impulses of the 21st century. When Tainui's democratically elected ruling executive, Te Kaumaarua, dumped Sir Robert from his corporate directorships, it found itself facing a resolution for its own dismissal from Dame Te Atairangikaahu. The Maori Queen claimed that only she could remove Sir Robert. The case went to the High Court and Te Kaumaarua won.

That outcome was, however, less significant than the Maori Queen's unwise appeal to tribal members' traditional loyalties. She has failed to recognise the shifting of generational sands, and that this is a clash she cannot win. Loyalty to the Maori King movement will wither until she withdraws from decision-making and, like other monarchs before her, accepts a figurehead status.

Dame Te Ata has already done Kingitanga great harm by supporting a system of governance that has failed the Tainui people. Those who guided the tribe's fortunes lost sight of the fact that every member of Tainui - and succeeding generations - should benefit from the settlement. Investments such as that in the Warriors rugby league team suggested that personal pride was a more powerful motivator than tribal welfare. And out-of-control overheads and exorbitant remuneration spoke volumes of a culture of aggrandisement.

Tainui's lamentable situation has inevitably promoted a sense of grievance, not least among tribal members living in straitened circumstances. For them, the settlement might never have occurred. If Tainui fails to remedy its financial woes, that grievance could be felt even more strongly by the next generation, some of whom might well feel inclined to turn to the Crown. Such notions will not wash, however. This was a full and final settlement.

As of now, Tainui is back where it virtually started. But at least it has been prepared to bring in outside advisers to fashion a recovery strategy. The new generation of leaders seem also to recognise the need for openness, effective governance and accountability. It has been a costly learning exercise but all may not be lost if the lessons have been taken on board.