In 2018, amid controversy over the failed merger of Pocket 8 Ball Club with the The Olde Establishment and the Putaruru District Services Memorial Club, then environmental health manager John Anderson advised the council not to conduct such an assessment. Councillors were told it could cost as much as $40,000 and that the special consultative procedure (SCP) carried out, sufficed. Based on the advice, most councillors voted in favour of conducting an in-house desktop study of data provided by the DIA instead. That was despite councillor Arama Ngāpō, who is now serving her second term on the council, raising concerns over whether an in-house study would be “unbiased”. By 2020 an internal review of the DIA’s handling of the failed merger came to reveal years of systematic failures and legal information being withheld from ministerial briefings.
Peter Braig/Nine
The DIA has completed its review of a South Waikato pokie venue merger almost two year after plans were abandoned (file photo).
A Department of Internal Affairs review has revealed years of systematic failures and legal information being withheld from ministerial briefings. It comes after DIA regulatory services manager Maarten Quivooy commissioned an internal review of the department’s handling of the failed South Waikato Class 4 gambling merger between Pockets 8 Ball Club, The Olde Establishment and the Putaruru District Services Memorial Club. Despite the process beginning in 2015, and withdrawing in 2018 when Pockets was put into liquidation amid the DIA’s licencing delays, it’s taken almost two years to complete.