Council calls in the Auditor General / Transport Agency Chiefs need to be sacked or resign
Council calls in the Auditor General / Transport Agency Chiefs need to be sacked or resign
The New Zealand Maori Council has intervened on behalf of a Kaikoura group that has ended in the Council asking the Auditor General to be called in to investigate a possible invoicing scam dealing with the North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery Project. The Council’s Executive Director, Matthew Tukaki, has said that he has “never seen such mismanagement, such disregard for communities and such usurping of the law as this case has presented.”
See the video and background here: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.tukaki/videos/573974746671906/
“It is long past time the Board of the Transport Agency and its CEO were sacked. Today I have written to the Auditor General asking for an independent audit of the North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery Project including its consortium members – for fear they are doing the following:
Wrongfully using the emergency legislation to usurp the consenting process under the resource management act – thereby allowing for no community consultation
Using this process to begin new projects or continuing carrying out unnecessary work so as to eat through the entire $1.25 billion budget – in other words I want an investigation into whether or not the consortium is running an invoicing scam – pure and simple
How it is that Maori Customary Rights have been blocked along a near entire coastal strip of highway
“Then we want the heads of the Agency itself. Their management and governorship is well past a sackable offence. We have road blockages that are cutting off small town New Zealand where there is no or little plan for recovery. We have seen the Agency fumble its way through more issues that have put more of us at risk than you can count – and all with little or no public accountability.” He said
“Our beef is not with the Minister – our beef is with an Agency that has completely disregarded the needs of small coastal communities – communities in general. Now, there is no doubt that what has been rebuilt (without the unending barriers) is an engineering success – but what they are doing now is completely damning.” He said
“We have issues across our regions with this sort of infrastructure and let’s face it some of the same big contractors are carrying out the work. And yet we also have communities at risk of being cut off because these Muppets couldn’t manage themselves out of a sock convention – the Agency needs to have a complete overhaul of its planning systems and long term forecasting – particularly when it comes to climate change and the impacts it could have on our current road infrastructure.” Tukaki said