AG: Ihuma¯tao money unlawfully spent
The Auditor-General has ruled the $29.9 million the Government used to buy the land at Ihuma¯ tao was unlawfully spent.
The money from the Land For Housing Programme was incurred without proper legal appropriation in Parliament, Auditor-General John Ryan ruled. The Government has blamed the error on a small mistake where two recommendations were left off a briefing paper, and say such errors are not unusual.
The Government announced in December that it would purchase the contentious piece of land at Ihuma¯ tao from Fletcher Building with $29.9m from the Land For Housing Programme.
It would then be placed into a trust and eventually developed, with some houses included, the Government said at the time.
The deal, made explicitly outside the Treaty of Waitangi process, ended one chapter in a dispute over the land near Auckland Airport, which was once a site of market gardens for local iwi but was confiscated by the New Zealand Government in 1863.
ACT leader David Seymour and National housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis both wrote to the Auditor-General asking for him to look into the case, arguing that the funds for Land For Housing Programme were being misused for a different purpose.
The Auditor-General did not quite agree with this statement, but did find that the new appropriation the Ministry for Housing and Urban Development had made had not gone through the proper parliamentary process.’’
‘‘In our view, the intent of the ministry, and the intent of ministers, was to establish a new appropriation that would provide authority for the purchase of the land at Ihuma¯ tao,’’ the office said in a press release.
‘‘However, because the ministry did not seek the correct approvals, the expenditure was incurred without appropriation and without authority to use Imprest Supply.’’
Housing Minister Megan Woods said the claims made by National and ACT were not substantiated – but there had been a technical error as a result of two recommendations left off a briefing paper.
‘‘While it is not an ideal situation, this was a technical error and there are standard processes for correcting it. The mistake happened because two recommendations that were needed to formally authorise the payment were accidentally left off the briefing paper,’’ Woods said.