Queen’s Birthday honours to rogues #TTCF #ORFU #PokieRorts

### Stuff.co.nz
Last updated 15:04, June 1 2015
Weekes triplets grandfather awarded Queen’s Service Medal for service to community
A Wellington community stalwart, who lost three grandchildren in the Qatar mall fire, has been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Rod Turner received the Queen’s Service Medal for service to the community, including a long career in the Army and dozens of volunteer organisations. The honour recognised “his leadership and selfless dedication to the community”. Turner spent 22 year in the military, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, before retiring and spending nine years as chief executive of the Children’s Health Camps.
Read more

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The piece of skirt responsible for funding irregularities* around the Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport [for Professional RUGBY] has claimed a QB Honour. Paperwork showing this fraud is held independently.

ODT: Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015
Members MNZM
Kereyn Maree Smith, Auckland, services to sports governance.

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More at this ODT Link

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● The Trusts Charitable Foundation (TTCF Inc) ● The Trusts Community Foundation Ltd (TTCF Ltd) ● Otago Rugby Football Union (ORFU) ● Professional Rugby ● Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport ● Harness Racing ● Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) ● Gambling Commission ● Pokies ● Rorts ● Organised Crime ● Serious Fraud ● Political Interference

RECEIVED COMMENTARY
Tue, 2 Jun 2015 at 7:45 p.m.

Awards all round for those associated with gambling, pokies, serious audit failings and the negative findings of the NZ Gambling Commission.

Sad as the circumstances are for Ron Turner, he was a TTCF Trustee who approved grants to the Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport in the hope of gaining ORFU’s pokie business after the ORFU had purchased the South Auckland Jokers Bars for about $3 million and so were desperate to align themselves with a pokie trust that would agree to illegally approve all the profits from those bars back to the interests of the ORFU.

The DIA investigated these arrangements and deemed that ORFU had an interest/ownership in the bars and therefore could not receive any proceeds from those bars. Facing potential financial disaster it would appear Kereyn Smith and other cronies associated with the ORFU agreed to front a new trust to counter DIA action.

Ex employees of ORFU, have confirmed that their contracts and pay were suddenly transferred over from the ORFU to the Centre of Excellence. The COE trustees then submitted grant applications to TTCF applying for salaries and costs that had previously been with the ORFU and avoided DIA scrutiny.

According to sources and documents, the very first grant of $500k from TTCF was needed and used for ORFU to meet its financial obligations to complete the purchase of the Jokers Bars and Ms Smith signature appears as sign off for the accountability.

There are serious anomalies which required proper investigation but as we know neither the DIA, the Police, the SFO or this Government are interested in proper investigations. Far easier to hold an award ceremony!!

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Another TTCF trustee, Warren Flaunty, NZ’s most elected man, was convicted of careless driving after causing the death of a young motor cyclist in West Auckland in 2010.

█ For more, enter the terms *pokies*, *pokie rorts*, *ttcf*, *orfu*, *dia* or *kereyn* in the search box at right.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

New Zealand: Salmond on abuse of democratic freedoms

### stuff.co.nz Last updated 10:57 13/01/2015 — Dominion Post
Erosion of democratic rights
By Dame Anne Salmond
OPINION In the wake of the shooting of cartoonists and journalists in Paris, political leaders in New Zealand have expressed shock and horror, and their support for those who uphold freedom of expression in other countries.
What about freedom of speech and thought at home, however?
Over the past decade or so, politicians seeking to uphold their own power have abused democratic freedoms in New Zealand. Journalists including Jon Stephenson (for reporting on New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan), Andrea Vance (over a suspected leak of a report about the GCSB spy agency), and Nicky Hager (for exposing scurrilous relationships between senior politicians and muck-raking bloggers) have been intimidated and attacked.
While our leaders do not shoot people, they work with others to try to ruin the lives and careers of those who disagree with them. The means may be different, but the intent is the same. One way or another, their critics (however valid their points of view might be) must be silenced.

It is not just outspoken individuals who are at risk. Institutions that are the bulwarks of our democracy have been undermined. Since the 1980s, the civil service, which is supposed to offer informed, impartial advice to politicians, has been brought under ministerial control, and instead of serving civil society now largely serves its political masters.

The freedom of the press has been compromised, for instance in the wake of the teapot tape scandal, when newspaper offices were raided in an effort to prevent the publication of those recordings, or when improper pressure is brought to bear on journalists and media outlets for partisan political purposes.
While H L Mencken defined good journalism as “afflicting the comfortable, and comforting the afflicted”, much journalism in New Zealand now does the opposite. Read more

█ Dame Anne Salmond is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland. She was the 2013 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year.

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Anthony Robins at The Standard says:
“Salmond goes on to cover attacks on “The independence of the judiciary and the rule of law”, “Independent statutory bodies”, “Freedom of thought and inquiry in universities and Crown Research Institutes” and “Radical extensions of the powers of the SIS and the GCSB” […] It’s an excellent article, and a depressing summary of the state of NZ.” Link

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Auckland Council report on pokie grant distribution

### NZ Herald Online 5:51 PM Monday Aug 11, 2014
Poor losing out on pokie cash
By David Fisher
Money tipped into pokie machines in the poorest parts of Auckland doesn’t come back to those communities in gaming grants, new data shows. In contrast, the wealthiest areas gamble far less but take a disproportionate amount of money out of other areas. This has been greeted as proof of a long-stated but never-proven claim about pokies – that the poor get poorer but the rich get richer. The Auckland Council research is behind a challenge to government plans to ringfence 80 per cent of pokie grant distribution inside large regional areas. Instead, it wants a special system for distributing pokie grants inside Auckland which will allow the poorest areas to benefit from money gambled locally. […] Overall, the study found all of Auckland missed out to the benefit of the rest of New Zealand. The $214.6 million put into pokie machines would have made $61.6 million available for grants, on industry averages after expenses were taken out. Auckland got $35.2 million.
Read more

● David Fisher is a senior reporter for the NZ Herald.

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Auckland Council Regional Strategy and Policy Committee
07 August 2014

Gambling Working Party – new regulations for the distribution of class 4 (pokie) gambling grants to communities

File No.: CP2014/14759

Purpose
1. To report back on a gambling working party’s deliberations regarding new government regulations to control the distribution of grants from class 4 (commonly known as “pokie”) gambling, and present recommendations based on feedback from the working party.

Executive summary
2. The Minister of Internal Affairs has recently acquired the power to make new regulations specifying the amount of class 4 grants money that must be returned to the area from which it came, and to set out how areas will be identified and defined for that purpose
3. The Minister recently announced that regional council areas will be used as the areas into which grants must be distributed, and the rate of return to those areas will be 80%. New regulations implementing that decision are expected to be issued later this year.
4. A gambling working party, established by minute REG/2013/10, has reviewed information regarding class 4 gaming machine proceeds in Auckland, and the current rate of return of class 4 grant money by local board area.
5. The new regulations could increase the amount of grant money flowing to community and sport groups in Auckland as a whole, but there are significant inequities in the distribution of class 4 grants within the region that the Minister’s proposal would not overcome.
6. The working party has developed a proposal which would address those inequities by defining areas, within Auckland, for the return of class 4 gambling grants.

Recommendation/s
That the Regional Strategy and Policy Committee:
a) endorse the working party’s proposal to define areas within Auckland, as presented in the appended map, whereby a proportion of grants derived from the proceeds of class 4 gambling in those areas would be returned to them
b) endorse the option of advocating for a 90 percent return of grant money to the defined areas, instead of the 80 percent currently proposed by the Minister of Internal Affairs
c) endorse the option of advocating for a different rate of return to the area identified as CGI on the map (comprising the City Centre and Gulf Islands), of either 40 percent or 45 percent
d) delegate to the chair of the Regional Strategy and Policy Committee to write to the Minister of Internal Affairs advocating that the proposed regulations be amended in accordance with the committee’s response to recommendations (a) to (c) above
e) note that the grants data for Auckland will be published on a web portal
f) note that the findings of the working party will be reported to local boards.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

SFO budget slashed, how useful were they ?! #politicalinterference

### stuff.co.nz Last updated 13:38 08/12/2013
Serious Fraud Office faces cutback
By Andrea Vance – Sunday Star-Times
A 25 per cent funding cut means the Serious Fraud Office will take on less cases, MPs were told this week. Funding to the agency is forecast to decline by 24.7 per cent from $10.180 million in 2013/14 to $7.670 in 2014/15. Parliament’s law and order select committee heard that the number of complaints received has more than doubled from around 200 to 435. But chief executive Julie Read told MPs the agency will have to prioritise the work it does, taking on two out of six low level cases as a deterrent.

“I think it is fair to say that the way we prioritise cases probably changed at the beginning of the Global Financial Crisis overall…I’ve anticipated that foundation will continue but we may have to adopt some additional tactics depending on the nature of the cases.”
–Julie Read

The committee heard the agency is starting to see more corruption and bribery complaints often at the lower level, than bigger finance company cases. In the year ending June 2013, 30 new investigations were launched.
Read more

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26.8.13 NZ rorts and sports —dependence on gambling and white collar crime
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15.7.13 Leave Otago white collar criminals ALONE, and other unfairness
29.6.13 Audit NZ and OAG clean bill of health —Suspicious!
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31.3.13 Internal Affairs and Auditor General stuff up bigtime #pokierorts
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr