May 05, 2014
$30 million figment of reporter’s imagination
The Maori Party’s Waikato-Hauraki candidate is denying claims she’s the $30 million woman.
Susan Cullen’s weekend selection has come under fire because of allegations she profiteered from designing courses such as Mahi Ora for Te Wananga o Aotearoa, which was founded by her father, Rongo Wetere.
The educationalist says she’s proud of what the wananga achieved, but the 2006 campaign by then-Labour education minister Trevor Mallard to halt its growth and force out the Wetere whanau was characterised by slurs and inaccurate reporting.
That included a widely-available newspaper report putting her worth at $30 million, which was the journalist’s estimate based on a proposal to tackle the Australian market.
"In reality I sold Mahi Ora to the wananga for $7.5 million. I had a huge mortgage to pay off from investment in the programmes, and so you could say ‘multi-millionaire’ but to be honest my true wealth is from our farming enterprises, it had not much to do with education," Mrs Cullen says.
If elected she will donate her salary to Maori charities, and she is challenging Prime Minister John Key to do the same.
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