Another Labour Failure Left To Officials

ACT New Zealand Deputy Leader and Social Welfare Spokesman Dr Muriel Newman today accused the Government of again hiding behind the Labour Department - this time leaving it to quietly publish reports revealing the failure of Capacity Building initiatives.

"Buried on the Department's website are evaluations of Labour's closing the gaps Capacity Building initiatives from 2000, 2001 and 2002 - evaluations showing that these initiatives failed to meet their most important outcomes," Dr Newman said.

"The reports claim that some initiatives - including Maori land development, Maori local partnership and Maori organisational development - have achieved such goals as `meeting their capacity to act' and `building community networks and partnerships'. Other outcomes are described in equally vague terms.

"But the areas relating to the programme's most important outcomes - land development and creating jobs - were `of particular difficulty'.

"These Labour Party manifesto programmes, foisted on to luckless public servants, are in question. Other major Community Employment Group programmes, such as the Community Employment Organisations, are looking increasingly like a multi-million dollar failure.

"Following hard on the heels of the Labour Department being forced to announce the termination of the Social Entrepreneur scheme last week, the publication of these Capacity Building reports is simply another example of Labour leaving the bad news to its officials.

"This flies in the face of Prime Minister Helen Clark's claims of a new standard of accountability, and her campaigning against poor use of taxpayers' money. The least the public could expect of Miss Clark and her Ministers is that they at least front up to their failures, not hide behind their officials," Dr Newman said.

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