Did they have skills?

Editor,

Many years ago the Sale of Liquor Act enabled the establishment of the Porirua Licensing Trust.

That same Act subsequently enabled the dissolution of the PLT and the establishment of the Porirua Community Trust.

The trustees of the PLT sought the assistance of the Governor General of the day to pass an order in council which dissolved the PLT and vested all the assets of the PLT onto the PCT. The dissolution took place on March 31, 2007. That is, on 31/3/07 PCT owned everything that previously had been owned by PLT.

How is it then, that the then president of the PLT and another trustee signed accounts for PLT falsely, representing that PLT existed and held assets totalling $6.685 million as at March 31, 2007?

Did the auditors know this when they signed a clean audit certificate for PLT’s accounts or were they misled?

Were the other trustees of that time, all but one of whom still hold public office, aware of the falsity of the accounts or did they, as seems so often to be the case, not have the skills to hold the office they were paid for?

I note from the public notice in this week’s Kapi-Mana News that an AGM of PCT is scheduled for September 20. The notice states that the trustees will elect a chairperson at the meeting. I call on the trustees to think again.

PCT is a body corporate. The trustees are not necessarily the members of the body corporate. It is likely that the members are the electors. The trust deed provides for an AGM of the Trust (not the trustees – and this is a clear distinction).

It provides that at each AGM a chairperson shall be elected. It does not provide for the trustees to be the persons electing the chairperson. Therefore the members seem to be the persons who should elect the chairperson.

That notwithstanding, four of the six current trustees have demonstrated they did not understand annual financial statements; one other has done so in other respects so that just leaves councillor Sheppard untainted, so to speak.

PLT did reconstitute itself as a community trust under the provisions of the Sale of Liquor Act on March 31, 2007. However, the the point Mr Collins seeks to make in respect of annual accounts produced at that time escapes me.

I suspect he just enjoys endeavouring to muddy the waters where he can. I can say, however, that the decisions taken at the time to reconstitute the PLT into the PCT and the paper trail produced to support and record these actions, were undertaken with caution and on the advice and with the oversight of the Trust’s solicitors, and in co-operation with the Audit Office.

To suggest that false representations were made at the time is just nonsense.

In respect of his references to the to the annual meeting and the election of the chairman, the trustees do not need to think again. They know their Trust deed and what its requirements are of them.

Amongst other things it requires of trustees two things, one to have an annual public meeting and to give the public (electors) an account of their stewardship over the previous financial years and two, to elect a chairman. Most licensing trusts carry out these two functions on two separate occasions. However, the PCT decided when it was formed to have these two events coincide.

The public’s opportunity to have an