Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Ngai Tahu Annual Report - what caught my eye

Ngai Tahu Annual report is out now. Go here to read it online.

I'm not going to do a big analysis - I'll leave that to the number crunchers but i will highlight a couple of areas that i noticed.

I found this interesting

"Governance


There have been a number of governance changes over the year in review. Mark Solomon resigned at the end of September 2008 and was replaced by Gerry Coates. Wally Stone’s departure in February saw Linda Constable step in as Interim Chair until the appointment of Trevor Burt on 1 August 2009. Mark Tume was not available for reappointment when his term ended on 30 June. Mark has been replaced by Catherine Drayton. We would like to pay tribute to all of our departing directors for their efforts over their time with NTHG. In particular we wish to acknowledge Wally Stone’s leadership and the performance of NTHG during his two and a half year stint as Chair.


Full subsidiary boards are in the process of being established for Ngāi Tahu Property, Ngāi Tahu Seafood and Ngāi Tahu Tourism. These boards will be populated with a cross-section of industry expertise, commercial and governance expertise and will all have Ngāi Tahu representation. As a result the role of the Ngāi Tahu Holdings Corporation Board will be redefined and mechanisms put in place to ensure the alignment of the subsidiary boards to the overall NTHG direction. We believe this will give us a strong governance structure moving forward."
These subsidiary boards sound good. All with Ngai Tahu representatives - i hope they go outside their usual circle of friends and get some new blood in, some new ideas and a wider cross-section of iwi membership being involved.

I notice we have reduced the amount of money spent on these items:

Rünanga Distributions & Development
Culture and Identity
Social Independence
Natural Resources, Tribal Properties and Mahinga Kai Cultural parks
Strategy and Influence
Whai Rawa Distributions and Development
Tribal Representation

From $12,859,000 to $10,189,000 that is a reduction of $2,670,000 or 21%

But I also notice this
"Short term employee benefits (senior management positions)(excluding redundancy/exit payments) have increased from $3,169,000 to $3,596,000".
 That is an increase of $427,000 or 13%

We have the following disclosed remuneration for employees of TRONT

Over $500,000 = 1
$500,000 - $400,000 = 0
$300,000 - $400,000 = 2
$200,000 - $300,000 = 8
$100,000 - $200,000 = 42

That is 53 people in the office Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu (thanks anon - good clarification) who earn over $100,000 a year. And that is an increase of 3. Talk about top-heavy!

How many are Ngai Tahu whanui?

So a tough year for our tribal income but not for some working in the office. Hui a tau will be interesting.
 
A final word from the kaiwhakahaere's report
 
"At one point this year, I was actually being called on a regular basis by whānau, old and young, offering to forego all manner of programmes, grants, subscriptions, anything to save the iwi money. How envious would be the chiefs of industry to hear of such selfless expressions from shareholders. But then we are an iwi, and ‘shareholder’ is an inadequate term to describe whānau bound by whakapapa and the pursuit of self-determination."
 
We have come a long way as an iwi and we have a long way to go.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kia ora Marty

you bet your boots that the bulk of the payments went to non-NT and almost all of the top 20 or so went to NTHC. The jump in the top rate was unquestionably Wally seeing Andrew Harrison right before the axe fell. Pity they did not publish the mates rates contractors as well.

the overall results were disappointing as BB noted - NTHC has historically performed badly and would have done way worse if TRONT had not stepped in to stop the rot earlier this year.

the forex shambles was an AH/WS baby - they won on this a year or so back - but a $6m loss on such low turnover is a lot

Distributions were in fact higher - it is just that before WS etc left these were being organised via the back door and not going through TRONT books - no wonder they want back at the table. Having been deprived of funds for a few months they are desparate to get back to the trough.

So congrats to the old TRONT board and the new NTHC team for what is a remarkable result compared to other organisations and companies - and beware the future with the new double/triple dipping Reps coming back to rip us all off once more.

Anonymous said...

Kia ora anon 1 and Marty

the key things re remuneration is that is not the Office staff who get the big salaries - this should be made clearer.

we need to pay good people what they are worth to do the mahi for us whether they are NT or not - but there did seem to be a culture of extravagance within NTHC which took place outside of the view of the board and TRONT until WS was removed.

Good people on Boards - quite agree and it is clear that NTHC and TRoNT did go outside of the usual mates - I heard Wally was trying to appoint his mates to the Seafood Board in much the same way as he protects himself a Whalewatch from scrutiny.

In time to come all will be revealed - we need to press for it to happen before these pretenders get control of the chequebook again.

last point - in previous years the salary bands included payouts for employment disputes etc - what is being kept from us this year?

if the NTHC COO got over $500k after his payrise from WS but before his exit under the golden parapont what was the the real cost to the tribe?

Anonymous said...

Kia ora Marty
Did I read somewhere on your Blog site that Wally Stone is on his way back this time as a TRONT representative? How can that happen if what is being said about the shambles he caused at NTHC is true? Am I missing something here?

Marty Mars said...

Kia ora anon

I haven't heard that, but who knows? - may have been within a comment. I suspect things are going to get very messy indeed.

You would think we, as an iwi, have had enough of the blood and vows of revenge and utu. We are fighting for the iwi now. We are fighting for the future and we have two opposing camps and they don't like each other. We are likely to all lose.

Anonymous said...

Kia ora Anonymous, hearsay is a prejudged statement.

We need someone from the Tront Board to produce information that portrays Stone either as an person with integrity or an undesirable? without this information we are still all in the dark.