The scandal enveloping Te Pati Maori and Manurewa Marae keeps getting murkier and there is now the rancid smell of political corruption emanating for their body politic.
A branded van, used by Te Pati Maori candidate Takutai Kemp last year, has raised fresh questions amid concerns over allegations relating to Manurewa Marae.
The late-model, 12-seater van was used by Kemp in her bid for the Tamaki Makaurau seat last year. The vehicle was wrapped in the candidate’s branding and featured prominently in Kemp’s marketing campaign as a mobile billboard.
The now-MP appeared with the van in a Q+A story just before the election.
Subsequent registration checks of the vehicle show that it is owned by the Manurewa Marae Trust Board. Kemp was the chief executive of the marae before the election.
That may be a problem for the marae as it is a registered charity. Charities are restricted in what political activities they can engage in.
Charities Services, which is part of Internal Affairs, told Q+A “registered charities must not support or oppose particular parties or candidates.”
The department’s general manager Charlotte Stanley said: “This includes making a donation to a political party or candidate’s election campaign, endorsing a party or candidate or allowing a party or candidate to use a charity’s resources.”
This comes under section 13 of the Charities Act which outlines a charity’s requirement to have “charitable purposes”.
Internal Affairs told Q+A that case law is key.
1News
Everything about this stinks – worse than a week-old chunk of mutton from a hangi.
The public deserves a wide ranging inquiry to get to the bottom of all the shenanigans. Sadly, though, I think any investigation will go the way of police investigations looking into deaths of Maori toddlers at the hands of caregivers: met with silence and stone-walling.
Where there is smoke, there is fire, and sometime soon someone is going to kick in a door and flood the smoking Te Pati Maori whare with oxygen and immolate all concerned.
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