A critical analysis of the Moana Pasifika project, arguing it was financially unsound from the start and led to significant taxpayer loss due to mismanagement, inflated contracts, and lack of accountability.
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If you want to listen and how to set up a business properly, then Moana Pacific is probably not your guide. I wandered through the whole sorry saga yesterday. Once again, Kate McNamara's excellent work. She took us back once again into how it all started and how most likely even then it was always going to end up the way it has. Mark Mitchell, sports minister, has said there is no public money for professional sport and he is right. And yet before... Before he ever arrived with his head screwed on properly, we were run by people who held a completely different view. Sport New Zealand is owed money. They will never get it back, given it's a loan and payments have already been missed. The team in its business case were doomed from the start. Ironically, I note the same company that did the business case, Deloitte, also got the job trying to sell the joint last year. The figure they wanted, $5 million. $5 million for a rugby team. Are you serious? M-FAT piled in financially. M-FAT, right? Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So political, not really sporting. Then you come to the various linked groups involved. Moana Pacifica Limited, Pacifica Medical Association, Moana Pacifica Charitable Trust, as well as Pacifica Futures. The Medical Association claimed they had plenty of money to run the thing. Why? Because of a contract. Pacifica Futures, they had the contract. Who was that contract with? Whana ora. More public money. The bit of the contract that Pacifica Futures were clipping could pay for the rugby, they claim. They held the contract for over 10 years. The last year alone was worth $44 million. The rugby team did the usual stuff for money like sponsorship and tickets but none of it covered the bills of course far less paid back what was owed and obviously no one's paying $5 million for a team that to be frank isn't that good and didn't attract a crowd. So what actually was it all about? The answers fairies and unicorns. The young Pacific kid sees Ardy running around the field and thinks oh I can do that so I'm going to eat well, run hard and be a star or something like that. The fact they could look at any other team and see something very similar doesn't seem to have... seem to have been or have put a handbrake on a very bad business idea from day one and so we the taxpayer will lose yet more money from yet more folly. It's amazing isn't it how good ideas look when it isn't your money that you're stumping up with.
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proven to be economically unrealistic
Mike's Minute: Moana Pasifika was a bust from the startSpotted something wrong on this page? Report a correction.
