No preferential treatment for Maori broadcasters

Maori broadcasting funding agency Te Mangai Paho (TMP) is confident there is no inner group of Maori broadcasters getting preferential treatment.

TMP chief executive Trevor Moeke was responding to questions from National MP Murray McCully at today's Maori affairs committee.

"I've had comments from Maori producers, directors and people involved in the industry suggesting that there is a list of an inner group getting the inside running on a vast proportion of the funding available," Mr McCully said.

"I've been looking through these contracts that have been signed off and the same names, the same people keep cropping up under different company headings.

"I'm not passing judgement on them, I'm simply saying there's a (checking) exercise that someone needs to go through here."

Mr Moeke denied anyone was getting preferential treatment and said the reason the same names cropped up was that the sector was so small.

"Don't forget that the sector is skilled (and) growing but it's still small by comparison to the rest of the television production centre and therefore you will find that (the same) names do come up," Mr Moeke said.

He was also confident funding was being used for its intended purpose, with checks being completed before each funding draw down. As well, about four contracts were independently audited each year.

TMP chairman Toby Curtis told the committee the agency's workload had substantially increased in the past few years and it needed more money.

"Taking stock over the last two years, if I could put it this way, our funding was far less, our work load was far less and we had a staff level that we still have at the moment," he said.

TMP used to have about $5 million to spend on programmes, most of which went to TVNZ. Last year it spent $21m, much of which was for programmes which would be shown on the Maori Television Service, expected to go to air in June/July.

Accordingly, contracts had increased from about 40 a year to about 75 for television. TMP also handled Maori radio, for which it had about 175 contracts a year.

"There has been a great impact upon the staff ... we're still operating with the same number of staff that we had two or three years ago when we only had small funding and a small number of contracts," Mr Curtis said.

"It is reaching a point where the board is becoming concerned for our management, particularly. It's not that they're going to fall over backwards but when you have people who are well skilled and have developed that level of expertise, we certainly don't want to lose it."

Funding was too low to allow any training schemes, and TMP was having to try to work with other departments to get staff trained and therefore lessen the workload of senior staff.

TMP was therefore seeking an extra $550,000 in the next budget. Its current operational funding is $1.6m.

- NZPA