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### ODT Online Tue, 15 Oct 2013
ORFU report to stay confidential
By Hamish McNeilly
A confidential report following the financial collapse of the Otago Rugby Football Union is likely to remain confidential.
The Dunedin City Council agreed to write off a debt of more than $400,000 and Dunedin Venues Management Ltd a debt of $80,000 to help the union avoid liquidation in March last year.
The New Zealand Rugby Union, which lent the cash-strapped union $500,000, commissioned a report by Cascade Consulting to look at the union’s involvement with pokie grants.
The report was later supplied to the Department of Internal Affairs, which declined to release the documents on the grounds it ”would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information”.
”The department does not consider the withholding of the report on ORFU provided by NZRU would diminish public confidence in the department as a responsible regulator of the gambling sector and does not consider that these reasons for withholding the information are outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make the information available.” –DIA
The Otago Daily Times lodged a complaint with the office of the Ombudsman on July 25, 2012, asking for the release of the information.
Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakem, in a provisional opinion released this week, said the department was entitled to withhold the information.
Read more
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 