In a second instalment of the ongoing saga of Matthew Tukaki’s fabulist lifestyle, 1 News has revealed that he was forced to pay back $60,000 to Oranga Tamariki as a result of overbilling.
On top of that, the Maori Council has moved quickly to distance themselves from the bloviating Tukaki as he splutters his denials and tries to blame everyone for his troubles.
On Sunday night, a 1News investigation revealed checks were not required or done on Tukaki’s CV before he was appointed to a key government role.
Oranga Tamariki Minister Kelvin Davis appointed Tukaki in 2021 to lead a ministerial advisory board, and said one of the reasons his CV wasn’t requested was because of his role as “Head of the Maori Council”. The massive task was to fix a ministry that Maori had lost confidence in.
“In terms of the quality of the work that was produced I have absolutely no concerns whatsoever. It was an amazing bit of work that the whole ministerial advisory board did. They produced an incredible report, Te Kahu Aroha which has influenced the future direction plan of Oranga Tamariki,” he said.
“I have confidence in the direction Oranga Tamariki is moving in because of the work they did.”
But 1News can reveal that Tukaki has had to pay back $60,000 after he over-charged Oranga Tamariki.
That’s despite a Cabinet paper clearly saying he would be paid $1000 per day.
Louis Houlbrooke from the Taxpayers’ Union told 1News: “In this case, it’s explicitly laid out that it’s $1000 per day …now you’d think it’d be pretty easy to figure out if he’d done an extra 60 days of work, but apparently no. They misinterpreted these very simple rules, overpaid him by $60,000.”
Asked if he was invoicing for “ghost hours”, Tukaki said he wasn’t.
“No, I was not invoicing for ghost hours at all. My record will show I was working around the clock, and I wouldn’t labour anybody to challenge me on that.”
Tukaki says there was incorrect advice and no induction from Oranga Tamariki.
“We’ve been given some advice about how to submit invoices about pro-rata’d hourly rates of payments and it wasn’t just me, it was overpayments to all of our board members.
“Mine was the largest overpayment of them all, for no other reason, then for the first couple of months, and I was doing a significant amount of heavy lifting,” he said.
1News
See how these grifters always try to shift the blame to everyone else. It’s always their fault. No induction, incorrect advice. I call bull dust on that. He’s claimed he’s this big corporate mover and shaker: except they know how to bill correctly and how to follow processes. Yet now he is claiming it was a lack of processes and training. If you believe that then Michael Wood has a cycle bridge he wants to sell you.
Meanwhile, The Maori Council doesn’t want a bar of him:
The New Zealand Maori Council has further distanced itself from former representative Matthew Tukaki, clarifying he held senior roles but never a position as its head.
It comes after some members say they were concerned with the way he publicly represented his role in the council.
1News
Yet Tukaki has consistently and repeatedly claimed as much:
Surely questions will begin to be asked about the cosy relationship Willie Jackson has with Matthew Tukaki, considering the fact that one of Jackson’s key staff in his office is Matthew Tukaki’s brother, Mike Tukaki.
I wonder when other organisations that involve Tukaki might also come under scrutiny. One that springs to mind is the Maori Carbon Foundation, which lists Tukaki as its Chief Executive and a member of the board. You will remember that this organisation was launched with great fanfare that included both Jevan Goulter, Hone Harawira, Murray McCully and Michelle Boag as founders. Jevan Goulter was also the star witness and escaped prosecution by agreeing to testify against the prominent businessman who was convicted last year of indecent assault. Strangely, both Goulter and Michelle Boag have disappeared from their website but Tukaki is still there.
I wonder how long it will be before we find out the real reason Tukaki ended his stint on Radio 2UE in Australia. I’ll bet you a dollar to a knob of goat poo that the real story is different from Tukaki’s.
It certainly looks like Wikipedia is onto his bullshit as they’ve flagged his Wikipedia page with warnings.
I suspect this is going to be a long lingering death by a thousand cuts for Matthew Tukaki, and his Government supporters from Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson on down.
And there are accusations that his grift goes back as far as his school days.
We also have a separate independent source that confirms what went down at St Patrick’s College at the time. So it seems Matthew Tukaki learned his errant ways from an early age.
What remains to be seen is if Labour will die in a ditch for Matthew Tukaki. From where I am looking, it certainly appears to be exactly what they are going to do. It is certainly increasingly reinforcing the developing narrative that this Government is corrupt.
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