Whānau Ora: Apartheid funded by the taxpayer, run like a family business
Another day, another scandal involving Whānau Ora. This time, it's Pasifika Futures Ltd at the centre of the rot. A supposed commissioning agency funded with huge amounts of public money, funnelling contracts straight into the hands of the chief executive’s family. The Ah Mau Sports and Wellbeing Consultancy Ltd, owned by Rose and Leeson Ah Mau, was handed a Whānau Ora-funded contract while both were on the payroll elsewhere in the same network of organisations.
Rose Ah Mau was working as a part-time nurse. Her husband Leeson, whose main claim to fame is a rugby league career, was given a full-time job managing "community partnerships" with Moana Pasifika. At the same time, Debbie Sorensen, the head of Pasifika Futures, was sitting on the boards of both Moana Pasifika Ltd and its charitable trust, which received Whānau Ora funds too. Four people across those organisations shared executive or governance roles, all conveniently connected.
When asked about the contract value, the PMA chairman Kiki Maoate wouldn’t say, brushing it off as “commercially sensitive.” They all say the same thing when the money trail gets uncomfortable. Behind the cultural slogans and flax-wrapped press releases, this is plain corruption. A public agency handing contracts to family. No transparency. No real accountability.
It keeps happening, especially in Māori and Pasifika-led organisations. Whānau Ora was meant to help communities, but what it often does is create a funding pipeline straight to friends and family. Jobs are often handed to unqualified relatives. Contracts go to cousins. It's not merit that matters, it's bloodlines. For many, this is the first time they have ever seen this kind of money. It's not surprising they treat it like Lotto winnings. Millions in public funds handed over without proper oversight, often to people who would never make it through a competitive hiring process anywhere else.
Whānau Ora has become race-based preferential treatment hiding behind the language of community care. It is apartheid in policy, built on the idea that some groups deserve special treatment and separate funding rules. Anyone who questions where the money is going is immediately labelled racist. That tactic has allowed rorts like this to continue unchecked.
Moana Pasifika, which also soaked up Whānau Ora funding, was later absorbed into the PMA group. The PMA insists none of the money went to the professional rugby team, only to the "community sports programme." Of course, they offer no evidence to back that up. Just another claim we are supposed to take on faith. No one is willing to name the value of the contracts, explain the hiring process, or take real responsibility.
Whānau Ora funnels millions to iwi
It’s 6.30pm. The state-funded propaganda machine, otherwise known as 1News is droning on in the background while I’m half-listening, half-scrolling, slowly eating my dinner and getting sidetracked like usual. Then I stumbled across this little gem on RNZ that stopped me right in my tracks…
Both Ah Maus are now fully employed by PMA under Sorensen’s leadership, with boosted job titles and higher pay. We are told that no one was "hired" when the organisations merged. Apparently, transferring people across entities is now the loophole to bypass all recruitment scrutiny. According to their lawyer, Leeson's rugby experience somehow makes him more than qualified to run national health-related sports programmes. It's a joke.
This is the reality of Whānau Ora. It is a taxpayer-funded system where millions go missing in a maze of trusts and cultural branding. The poor stay poor. The connected get richer. The organisations responsible wave away questions with empty statements about transparency, while stuffing their boards with family and friends.
Whānau Ora should be dismantled. This isn't empowerment, it is exploitation of the system by those lucky enough to sit at the top. The people it was meant to help never see the benefit. The insiders make sure of that.
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Good on you exposing another trough with no accountability (and another example of an entitled attitude towards public money earned by others).
This is nauseating! Appointing each other is just incestuous! No accountability and boardering on theft! How the hell do they get away with this?.....