Latimer trust fees excessive says report

By AUDREY YOUNG political editor

A parliamentary select committee has issued a damning report on the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, especially chairman Sir Graham Latimer, but the Government is powerless to make it improve its performance.

The trust uses rents from Crown forest land to help Maori with Treaty of Waitangi claims. Last year it provided $21 million.

The Maori affairs select committee report on the trust said Sir Graham's fees were "grossly excessive" and he blurred the lines between governance and management by working closely with treaty claimants. His fees are now capped at $25,000, and directors' fees at $12,500.

The report also criticised the $24,305 the trust spent on a trip by Sir Graham to London in May 2001 for a Privy Council hearing on a fisheries case. It found the trust's justification "neither tenable nor credible" and beyond the trust deed.

It issued a heavily worded ultimatum for the trust to improve within a year but has no muscle to back it up - short of forcing change through the law.

"We expect the trust to be able to demonstrate within the next 12 months that it has addressed what we consider to be serious shortcomings in its performance and operations," says the committee's report, issued yesterday.

Karen Waterreus is the long-serving chief executive and has worked closely with Sir Graham, who has chaired the trust since its inception in 1990.

Three of the six trustees are Crown appointees: former Labour president Maryan Street (since 2000) , former Race Relations Commissioner Gregory Fortuin (2002) and former Council of Trade Unions secretary Angela Foulkes (2003).

Sir Graham is one of three trustees appointed by the Maori Council - which he also chairs - and the Federation of Maori Authorities. The others are Professor Whatarangi Winiata (since 1997) and Paul Morgan (2003), chief executive of the federation.

The select committee said the trust hampered it in its inquiry.

"Our pursuance of this inquiry was frustrated by the poor quality of some of the answers from the trust to our written questions, indicating an ability to provide critical information that we did not find helpful."

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the trust should be disbanded. "That can be done by statute and set something that is respectable. This was a disgrace from the very beginning."

He said Sir Graham had been preferred by successive Administrations, Labour and National, but had never had the ability to do the job and showed an incapacity to be able to account in such circumstances.

"It's an abomination to Maoridom and the taxpayers as well."

National Party Maori affairs spokeswoman Georgina te Heuheu said the trust had lost sight of its purpose and needed a shake-up.

But asked if the heads should roll, she said: "It is for the trust to decide whether or not they take appropriate action to address the major findings".

The select committee, chaired by Te Tai Tonga MP Mahara Okeroa, was concerned at the size of the trust's bureaucracy. It appeared to manage claims itself rather than helping Maori research their own. Six hundred reports had been prepared with only three cases of transfer of assets to Maori claimants.

The committee was concerned the trust had a staff of 53 and 10 were researchers.

"Our view is that the size, structure and operation of the trust appear to be more consistent with an organisation that is running the claims itself, rather than assisting claimants manage their own claims," it said.

"This has meant considerable expenditure by the trust on its own personnel and also on consultants, to run claims with little reference, it seems, to claimants' needs or wishes."

The committee believed criteria for funding were open to criticism "inasmuch as they allow for preferential treatment of claimants".

"That is, the criteria favour those who are in a collective of claimants.

"There is no requirement in the trust deed that claimants must act as a collective."

The issue of the fees for the chairman and directors was addressed this year when Finance Minister Michael Cullen capped them.

The report said that for the type of board it is, the fees allowed for a maximum of 50 claimable days a year by the chairman. But the $152,400 paid to Sir Graham in the 2003 financial year equated to more than 304.

Neither Sir Graham nor Karen Waterreus could be contacted.

Trustees' fees For 2000-2003

* Sir Graham Latimer $469,100

* Lou Tangaere $47,900

* Whatarangi Winiata $29,400

* Rick Bettle $28,376