8 Comments
Mar 3Liked by Anna McMartin

Thank you for this investigation. I understand the feelings are complex but the money part is surely simple. I a charity is benefiting from public funds and tax free status it should be completely transparent and it should be ethical. Just like for a PM - even if there’s an entitlement is it right to use it?

Expand full comment
author

I'm inclined to agree. At the very least, not being upfront about it to me seems unforgivable.

Expand full comment
Mar 3Liked by Anna McMartin

Hard to comprehend how such blatant dependacy on the state is allowed however I am not surprised at all. Thank you for the time you spend researching!

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for reading!

Expand full comment
Mar 3Liked by Anna McMartin

Thank you for your hard work on this - I'm really impressed with how far you got through Diocesan politics. I went to a Catholic school too, because we were too skint in my family to afford the Anglican one in the same city, and the oldest two kids of us four had done really badly at the local state school.

Sacred Heart Girls made a difference to the way my whole life has gone, without a doubt, and in a really good way. Teachers went out of their way to work with me and I didn't make it easy for them. And the debt collection? We had no bailiffs at our door. The school just kept giving me envelopes with "account rendered" stamps on the invoice inside, which my form teacher had to sheepishly deliver to me to take home, month after month, until I left (and I think my parents got there in the end).

Thanks again for pursuing clarity on where those fees really go. Nice work.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for reading, e hoa, and double thanks for understanding how morally complex this feels - the treasured things and the awful ones. ❤️

Expand full comment

I love your investigation articles. This one especially.

All weekend I have been thinking about NZ being an OECD country with high HDI number and not too bad GDP per capita and how that contrasts with 1news telling me the roads in the Marlborough sounds are still “goat tracks” and residents have to travel by boat to get groceries. There aren’t enough people to look into medical complaints. People are waiting 3 years for a trial date. 4 years for an inquest. Some government departments still use lotus notes. IRD had a multimillion dollar IT upgrade but takes three weeks to reply to a message and never answers the phone. Volunteer firefighters aren’t covered by ACC. Housing, poverty, structural racism, gender wage gap, treaty breaches, literacy rates. Special arrangements for businesses burning our planet and ruining our water. There are hundreds more things that are just astonishing and exasperating in a “wealthy country”.

If you have time and inclination one day, can you please try to explain - or find someone who can - where all our money goes? Has gone? When I don’t know why I haven’t got money for new shoes I look at my spending and know it’s the takeaways. Always the takeaways and the coffees. What is our country’s equivalent? Where is our wealth?

Expand full comment
author

Thank you so much for reading, e hoa, and for your subscription. You've sparked a thought here. It's incredibly hard to work out where money is going - even if you know the basics of how to navigate these things. I'll ponder writing about it. ❤️

Expand full comment