BUILDING A HOUSE ON SAND

At the heart of the Ngai Tahu woes is a disagreement over the building of the " House of Tahu. " a $52 million dollar concrete monument to bloated egos.

Now when we heard that this was the issue we thought well if the financials stack up then why not?
We thought that Ngai Tahu must be confident that they were going to make lots of money from their commercial enterprises.

Nope wrong. You see the House is being built on the basis that the tribe is going to get more money from the Government as the original settlement included a relativity clause. Which means that if another tribe gets more than Ngai Tahu did then Ngai Tahu gets a top up. Ten points to the negotiators for organising that one. They were cunninger than cunning things and thats bloody cunning, even for Maoris.

So, the House of Tahu is being built with money from the government, not money that they have earned, but money they have been given.

But here is the kicker. It will house all of the people Ngai Tahu employ. Well, I said when told this stunningly interesting snippet, thats a lot of people I didn't think that the tribe employed that many .

Now it really does get worse.

Ngai Tahu has estimated that because of the extra money they will get they will increase the staffing levels by 33%.

Yip - that's the financial logic model that they have employed.

So it goes something like this - When you get more money you build a big house because when you have more money you have to employ more people.

We thought it was get more money, invest it in things that make more money, and disburse the benefits to the people in the way of business and education and cultural grants.

But no - it is to build a house on sand.