Political Roundup: Auditor-General damns Govt’s charity funding processes

THREE KEY FACTS
Dr Bryce Edwards is Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.
OPINION
Should Government ministers be able to dole out money to anyone they want? Or should proper rules be followed when disbursing taxpayer funds?
According to a landmark condemnation from the Auditor-General this week, the politicians need to follow the rules. The watchdog published a damning letter on Wednesday that he had sent to the Ministry of Health, chiding them for letting the Minister for Mental Health, Matt Doocey, hand out $24 million to a charity closely connected with various political parties – Mike King’s Gumboot Fridays.
Auditor-General John Ryan says “transparency, integrity, accountability and value for money” need to be at the centre of how government agencies spend their money. Certainly, in the past, public money wasn’t just dished out to the mates of politicians. The public service was there to prevent such abuse of office. Officials have been tasked with ensuring proper procurement processes are followed.
That protection against corruption no longer appears to be so healthy. Basically, the Auditor-General says the way the public servants just handed out $24m to Mike King stinks. Therefore, his landmark telling-off of the Ministry of Health should be a real wake-up call about the state of the public service. The letter needs much more attention.
The scandal over the $24m given to the Gumboot Friday programme comes out of the closeness many politicians and political parties have to comedian and mental health advocate Mike King. Across the political spectrum, politicians have championed King’s unorthodox methods and tenacity in trying to turn around the blight of youth mental health illness. The fact that King has been something of an outsider, rejected by the health system, has made him a cause celebre.
Hence the last Labour Government gave $600,000 of funding to his Gumboot Friday programme in 2021 without any proper process. And then the new coalition Government agreed to provide King with even more money – giving Gumboot Friday $6m a year for four years to counsel young people.
Although there are many charities and social services providers that provide similar services to those of Gumboot Friday, these competing providers were locked out of consideration for the $24m fund. New Zealand First and the National Party decided against any advertised and open tendering process for this service in favour of just giving the funding straight to Mike King.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey, therefore, instructed the Ministry of Health to sign a contract with King’s charity. There was only a little pushback to this. The Treasury, for example, advised that providing the money to the charity would involve risks due to ignoring the procurement rules. The Health Ministry officials also pointed out to Doocey that such funding would not be compliant with public procurement rules.
However, health officials came up with a way around the rules – a legal loophole. In health contracts there’s a provision to “opt out” of the standard procurement processes for cases of specialist health services. Although this exemption wasn’t meant for the likes of Gumboot Friday, it meant officials were able to deliver what the Beehive wanted.
The letter from Auditor-General John Ryan essentially says the Ministry of Health was too eager to please, and officials should have pushed back against their minister. They should have explicitly told Doocey they couldn’t give the contract to King’s charity without breaking the rules. And regarding using the “opt-out” loophole, the Auditor-General says the ministry failed to give a “clear justification” for doing so.
The Auditor-General’s six-page letter contains one key part worth quoting at length. This is his list of the five things wrong with the procurement process:
The letter acknowledges officials were “put in a difficult position” because they were directed by their minister to dole out the money to Gumboot Friday. But the Auditor-General simply doesn’t believe officials pushed back hard enough: “the documents I have seen do not reassure me that the full range of risks associated with the procurement were communicated to ministers”.
The main firepower of the Auditor-General’s letter was directed at the officials in the Ministry of Health. And there’s no doubt they deserve the lambast.
But are the politicians getting off too lightly? The Herald’s Audrey Young thinks so, complaining the Auditor-General has slammed the wrong group: “The Auditor-General has eschewed any criticism of the politicians or coalition agreements themselves, effectively saying they are out of bounds. That is letting them off the hook. Someone with independence and oversight should be telling the politicians why such promises are problematic to good practice. If not the Auditor-General, then who?”
Matt Doocey has gone to ground this week, refusing to be interviewed on the Auditor-General’s finding. Instead he’s put out a statement, blaming officials: “While the decision to fund Gumboot Friday was a decision made by the Government, how this commitment was implemented was a decision for the Ministry of Health. Throughout the process, the minister has sought, and received assurance from officials that the implementation option chosen by the Ministry of Health is compliant with government procurement rules.”
As Young rightly comments, the minister’s attempt to blame officials is “galling”.
The Auditor-General’s report only dealt with the Ministry of Health’s role in the procurement process for Gumboot Friday. However, there are still other concerns about the funding.
The problem is that Gumboot Friday is run by the I Am Hope charity, which is increasingly viewed as a National Party charity. The chief executive who was running the charity for much of the time of the controversy was Troy Elliott, a National Party activist, who has been keen to become a National MP (following in the footsteps of his father, who had been in Parliament).
The new chairwoman of the charity is Naomi Ballantyne, who has been a financial donor to National in recent years. During the 2020 election year, she donated $20,600 to the party; last year, she made three further donations totalling $6840. She made her fortune in the life insurance industry.
The other significant connection is via Bill English’s ImpactLab. The Gumboot Friday programme was audited by ImpactLab to establish whether it was effective in its charitable pursuits. English’s company gave Gumboot Friday a “GoodMeasure” summary of making a social profit of $5.70 for every dollar invested.
It was this figure Matt Doocey used as the justification for the $24m of funding, also adding: “In this Government, we will be investing in services that can demonstrate a social return on investment.”
Social investment is therefore the new methodology for the National Party’s programme of shifting state expenditure into the social and charity sector. We should therefore expect to see much more use of ImpactLab (which is now run by English’s daughter, Maria English) in justifying contracts to private providers. But there are real questions about its independence (as well as its methodology).
Of course, in contrast to Gumboot Friday getting $24m, we have leaned this week that David Letele’s South Auckland foodbank is having to close at Christmas this year due to a lack of Government support. Letele is also something of a popular figure in political circles, with his innovative achievements incredibly respected. However, he doesn’t seem to be very close to any of the parties that are currently in power.
The unfortunate lesson for the charity sector therefore seems to be: it’s not what you do, it’s who you know.
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