Donovan Clarke, CEO of Toitu te Waiora (I didn’t know either, so click here) used his work credit card for perks during a work trip to Australia in August. The cost to taxpayers was over $6000. Clarke was attending a Council of Ambulance Authorities (CAA) conference.
The New Zealand Herald chose to paywall the article, but here are a few highlights.
The four-day trip was capped by Clarke enjoying a lunch of wings and beer, dinner of lobster, prawn and calamari, before finally getting a taxpayer-funded taxi back to his four-star hotel at 3:36am – just three hours before another taxi was hailed to take him from Novotel Darling Harbour to Sydney Airport for his return flight to Wellington.
Toitu te Waiora, responsible for improving industry education in the health and social service sectors, is one of six Workforce Development Councils (WDCs) set up last year in a major reform of vocational education.
At the time of their establishment, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins said it was a “major milestone in what is the biggest reform of vocational education in a generation”.
But wait, there’s more.
Clarke is recorded as having used his card to spend $72,862.03 between October and August, compared to just $30,713.98 in total for the five other chief executives put together. […]
Requests to interview Clarke and his chairman David Waters were declined, with Waters instead issuing a statement saying Clarke was on leave and not available for comment.
Waters did not respond to follow-up questions about whether Clarke’s leave was paid, planned, or administrative. […]
Waters is also the chief executive of CAA, the organiser of the Sydney conference.
National Party MP Penny Simmonds (tertiary education spokesperson) says, “Questions need to be asked about how that has happened, and whether such significant expenses are appropriate”.
Read more here. Discuss it on The BFD.
