Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare considers removing incentive payment clauses

Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and fellow Ministers Kelvin Davis and Andrew Little. Photo / NZME

Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare says he's open to a discussion about dropping incentivisation clauses from the contracts of its commissioning agencies following a furore over a $600,000 surplus being paid by one to a private shareholder.

It emerged this week that Te Pou Matakana, one of Whānau Ora's commissioning agencies, paid a $600,000 surplus to the National Urban Māori Authority (Numa).

Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK), which administers Whānau's Ora's funding, told the Māori Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday it was free to do that but chief executive Michelle Hippolite said it was something she would ask questions about.

Henare said he would prefer that any surplus be reinvested and said he would be asking questions about it at a meeting with Te Pou Matakana.

Today he said the issue of the $600,000 payment to Numa had not been raised at today's meeting, which had been arranged to discuss a review of Whānau Ora.

While the issue of how the surplus was used did not come up, issues around transparency and accountability, which were mentioned in the review, did.

It is understood the incentive clause in the contract was put there at the request of the previous government.

Henare said that as part of the Whānau Ora review, the effectiveness of the commissioning model was looked at.

"Interestingly enough, the review came back saying quite clearly that the commissioning model for outcomes actually has proven to be quite successful in gaining outcomes for families," Henare said.

"Our challenge now, moving forward, is what does that look like under this Government?"

Henare said he was willing to discuss removing incentivisation clauses from future contracts.

He expected the review would be made public in the new year, once it had been through Cabinet.