Former mayor queries appointments to charity trust
The partners of two former Labour MPs have been controversially appointed to the South Island’s largest charity – the $600 million Rata Foundation.
Jane Sherriff and Philippa Burns are the latest appointments to the 12-member board of the former Canterbury Community Trust, which distributes about $18m in grants each year.
It made $42m from its investments in the year to the end of March 2017 and spent about $4m on administration and expenses.
Sherriff is the partner of former Labour minister Clayton Cosgrove and Burns is the wife of Brendon Burns, who was Labour MP for Christchurch Central between 2008 and 2011 and stood for Kaikoura twice without success.
The inclusion of Sherriff and Burns will mean the board comprises two men and 10 women. The current foundation chair, Christine Korako, is the wife of National list MP Nuk Korako.
Former Christchurch mayor Garry Moore said political parties had to stop ‘‘playing games’’ with appointments to important boards.
The board’s trustees are appointed by the Minister of Finance for an initial term of four years and receive an honorarium. In the 2016/17 year, the board chair and committee chairs garnered $95,000 and trustees got $100,000, an average of $16,250 per trustee. Expenses are not included. The responsibility to appoint the trustees was delegated to the Associate Minister of Finance, David Clark.
Moore, who is no longer a member of the Labour Party, said the scale of the foundation’s operation required a more transparent process in the appointment of trustees.
He had reluctantly put his own name forward after several approaches from the previous foundation chair Roger Bridge, who is the chairman of the National Party’s CanterburyWestland region.
‘‘Look I know nobody will believe me but I have no sour grapes at all,’’ Moore said.
Philippa Burns said she was uncomfortable about dealing with questions about political appointments and found the question of whether she had been appointed because of the connection to her husband was ‘‘a bit insulting’’.
She had been appointed because of her work in the community, she said.
The board was drawn from many parts of the community and the trustees worked well together in a ‘‘non-partisan’’ way, Burns said.
Clark said a clear and longstanding process for making appointments to community trusts existed.
After advice from the Department of Internal Affairs, he had sought nominations from community trusts and from the caucuses of the Coalition Government in March and April 2018.