Serious allegations against Te Pati Maori MP
Andrea Vance reports:
A Te Pāti Māori MP and the marae she once ran are at the centre of claims that private information collected during the census was used for political campaigning.
Stats NZ, the Government’s official data agency, is now investigating after a whistleblower from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) came forward with a series of allegations relating to Manurewa Marae.
The whistleblower also laid a complaint with police last week.
Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp stood down as the marae’s chief executive last year after narrowly beating incumbent Labour MP Peeni Henare by only 42 votes in the election’s Tāmaki Makaurau race.
The probe comes as a number of former marae workers have alleged that:
- Hundreds of census forms collected by marae staff were photocopied and retained; and data from the forms such as personal contact details, household occupancy and birth dates was entered into an online database and sent to the Waipareira Trust. Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere runs the social services charity and is chief executive of Whānau Ora, and denies this.
- They believe that information was then used to target Māori electorate voters in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate.
- They also allege that Marae staff who delivered census forms also included enrolment forms for voters to change from the general to the Māori roll.
Further allegations are that:
- Participants were given $100 supermarket vouchers, wellness packs or food parcels to induce them to complete the forms.
- Visitors to the marae last year were also given $100 supermarket vouchers when they completed the forms to switch rolls.
- Attempts were made to alert Stats NZ and MSD, but neither agency acted.
Tamihere strenuously denied that census information was collected and misused. He said the allegations were driven by complainants with a gripe.
They are just allegations, but they are incredibly serious. They appear to involved Stats NZ, MSD and the Electoral Commission. Rather than each investigate their silo, maybe there should be an official inquiry by a QC into them?