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Speaker 1: Now the Maori Party saga's blown up even more. Last night,

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Speaker 1: the party sent out a late night email accusing their

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Speaker 1: MP Muddy a Mental Kapa Kingi of being on track

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Speaker 1: to overspend her parliamentary budget by one hundred and thirty

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars. The email also alleged that her son Edu

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Speaker 1: Kapa Kingi, who's the founder of the toy Tu Te

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Speaker 1: Triti movement, verbally abused parliamentary security staff and was trespassed

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Speaker 1: from parliamentary grounds. Now neither of them have directly responded

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Speaker 1: to the allegations. Bryce Edwards is the director of the

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Speaker 1: Integrity Institute and with us. Now, Hey Bryce, hi, Heather,

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Speaker 1: this is weird, isn't it to have? I mean, you

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Speaker 1: have friendly fire in parties, but often it's through leaks

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Speaker 1: rather than just outright like this, isn't it?

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Speaker 2: Oh? This just shows how deep and bitter those factions

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Speaker 2: are and the degree of feeling that you can have

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Speaker 2: an email like this sent out at ten pm on

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Speaker 2: a Monday night, which is a real payback. This is

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Speaker 2: from the leadership against the MPs in question. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's this is a bit of a meltdown.

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Speaker 1: Are there rules Bryce about employing your own family, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you're using taxpayer money like she is.

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Speaker 2: There should be I mean, they have some soft rules

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Speaker 2: about it. They're not hard rules that you're supposed to

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Speaker 2: only hire family members if you can't find someone better, basically,

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Speaker 2: which isn't much of a rule. So that's what's happened here.

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Speaker 2: And of course it's only come to light through a

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Speaker 2: leak that there were family members employed, and only after

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Speaker 2: there was this person was essentially fired because of these

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Speaker 2: alleged bad behavior, so yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's also

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Speaker 2: a case that, as far as understand, the employee was

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Speaker 2: also an officeholder in the party, which is also normally

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Speaker 2: not allowed. Parliamentary staff aren't allowed to be paid to

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Speaker 2: carry out party functions. They're there for parliamentary functions. They're

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Speaker 2: not supposed to be electioneering, and that's pretty much what

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Speaker 2: Eru Kipikuni was doing. So yeah, it's right.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So then who should be investigating this?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think Parliamentary Service will be carrying out some

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Speaker 2: sort of investigation, but of course they are run by

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Speaker 2: the MPs essentially, and so we probably need an outside

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Speaker 2: independent person coming in to clear all this up because

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Speaker 2: it does look like there's been a lot of misuse

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Speaker 2: of taxpaths funding and used for party purposes, and in

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Speaker 2: the past the Orders the General has taken a great

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Speaker 2: interest in this. So I think with about two thousand

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Speaker 2: and six the Orders of General came in and looked

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Speaker 2: at some of the ways that the politicians were using

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Speaker 2: taxpayer money to essentially electionnaire and that's what seems to

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Speaker 2: have happened here. Yeah, probably a good time for the

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Speaker 2: Orders of General to come back.

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Speaker 1: In quite Thank you, it's good to talk to you

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Speaker 1: really appreciate it. This Bryce Edwards, who is the director

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Speaker 1: of the Integrity Institute.

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