Commercial fishing school refunds $1m for subsidy errors over four years
Photo:
123RF
A commercial fishing school has repaid more than $1 million to the government, after errors that included claiming funding for students who never attended.
Westport Deep Sea Fishing Ltd said an IT change and a decision to waive fees for flood-affected students contributed to the problems.
A Tertiary Education Commission report said the private tertiary institution received funding for 523 full-time equivalent students in the four years from 2020 to the end of 2023.
An audit last year "revealed significant issues with how student data was reported" and a subsequent investigation found it should have received funding for only 413 FTE students, a difference of almost 110 FTE.
The report said, before the audit, the commission had already recovered $264,079 in fees-free funding, due to breaches of the scheme's funding agreement between 2020-23.
It said the audit also found a course that made up 0.0333 of a course of study was incorrectly entered as 0.333, meaning the school received $3000 more per student enrolment than it should have.
"This resulted in an indicative funding recovery of $354,081 for 116 students," the report said.
The investigation found 122 students (109 FTE) were invalid enrolments.
The report said the school confirmed it "preloaded" a lot of students into its 2023 student data return, "but had failed to remove any enrolments which did not eventuate or where the learner did not meet the requirements for a confirmed learner enrolment".
It said the school also claimed funding for nine students who had been granted recognition of prior learning, meaning the school awarded them credit for existing knowledge, without actually providing any tuition.
The report said the investigation found the school needed to repay a further $633,550.
"WDSF has acknowledged the invalid enrolments that were identified during this work, attributing the errors to administrative oversights," the report said. "As indicated above, the preloading of enrolments in the 2023 SDR, without sufficient removal of any learners who did not progress to a full enrolment, has created significant overfunding."
It said the school entered a repayment plan and the money would be repaid by June 2025.
"The TEC notes that, while a number of issues were identified, WDSF management and staff have engaged openly and co-operatively throughout the audit and investigation process," the report said.
School owner Peter Maich told RNZ the fees-free repayment followed a decision to waive fees for students who were not able to attend courses, due to flooding in Bay of Plenty.
He said the school was told that, because it was not charging a fee, it should not have claimed fees-free funding, which at the time covered the first year of fees for first-time tertiary students.
Maich said a change in IT provider for data returns to the Tertiary Education Commission resulted in duplicate enrolments.
He said the failure to remove students from its 2023 data return was due to the school being audited during the period it would normally remove non-attenders from its system.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
NZ's new AI strategy is long on 'economic opportunity' but short on managing ethical and social risk
By By Andrew Lensen* of Photo: Supplied/Callaghan Innovation The government's newly unveiled National AI Strategy is all about what its title said: "Investing with Confidence". It tells businesses that Aotearoa New Zealand is open for AI use, and that our "light touch" approach won't get in their way. The question now is whether the claims made for AI by Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Shane Reti - that it will help boost productivity and enable the economy to grow by billions of dollars - can be justified. Generative AI - the kind powering ChatGPT, CoPilot, and Google's video generator Veo 3 - is certainly earning money. In its latest funding round in April, OpenAI was valued at US$300 billion . Nvidia, which makes the hardware that powers AI technology, just became the first publicly traded company to surpass a $4 trillion market valuation . It'd be great if New Zealand could get a slice of that pie. New Zealand doesn't have the capacity to build new generative AI systems, however. That takes tens of thousands of NVIDIA's chips, costing many millions of dollars that only big tech companies or large nation states can afford. What New Zealand can do is build new systems and services around these models, either by fine-tuning them or using them as part of a bigger software system or service. The government isn't offering any new money to help companies do this. Its AI strategy is about reducing barriers, providing regulatory guidance, building capacity, and ensuring adaptation happens responsibly. But there aren't many barriers to begin with. The regulatory guidance contained in the strategy essentially said "we won't regulate". Existing laws are said to be "technology-neutral" and therefore sufficient. As for building capacity, the country's tertiary sector is more under-funded than ever, with universities cutting courses and staff. Humanities research into AI ethics is also ineligible for government funding as it doesn't contribute to economic growth. The issue of responsible adoption is perhaps of most concern. The 42-page " Responsible AI Guidance for Businesses " document, released alongside the strategy, contains useful material on issues such as detecting bias, measuring model accuracy, and human oversight. But it is just that - guidance - and entirely voluntary. This puts New Zealand among the most relaxed nations when it comes to AI regulation, along with Japan and Singapore . At the other end is the European Union, which enacted its comprehensive AI Act in 2024, and has stood fast against lobbying to delay legislative rollout. The relaxed approach is interesting in light of New Zealand being ranked third-to-last out of 47 countries in a recent survey of trust in AI . In another survey from last year, 66 percent of New Zealanders reported being nervous about the impacts of AI . Some of the nervousness can be explained by AI being a new technology with well documented examples of inappropriate use, intentional or not. Deepfakes as a form of cyberbullying have become a major concern. Even the ACT Party, not generally in favour of more regulation, wants to criminalise the creation and sharing of non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes. Generative image, video, and music creation is reducing the demand for creative workers, even though it is their very work that was used to train the AI models. But there are other, more subtle issues, too. AI systems learn from data. If that data is biased, then those systems will learn to be biased, too. New Zealanders are right to be anxious about the prospect of private sector companies denying them jobs, entry to supermarkets , or a bank loan because of something in their pasts. Because modern deep learning models are so complex and impenetrable, it can be impossible to determine how an AI system made a decision. And what of the potential for AI to be used online to mislead voters and discredit the democratic process, as the New York Times has reported, may have occurred already in at least 50 cases. The strategy is essentially silent on all of these issues. It also doesn't mention Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. Even Google's AI summary tells me this is the nation's founding document, laying the groundwork for Māori and the Crown to coexist. AI, like any data-driven system, has the potential to disproportionately disadvantage Māori if it involves systems from overseas designed (and trained) for other populations. Allowing these systems to be imported and deployed in Aotearoa New Zealand in sensitive applications - healthcare or justice, for example - without any regulation or oversight risks worsening inequalities even further. What's the alternative? The EU offers some useful answers. It has taken the approach of categorising AI uses based on risk : This feels like a mature approach New Zealand might emulate. It wouldn't stymie productivity much - unless companies were doing something risky. In which case, the 66 percent of New Zealanders who are nervous about AI might well agree it's worth slowing down and getting it right. Andrew Lensen is a Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington -This story was originally published on The Conversation.
RNZ News
15 hours ago
- RNZ News
Commercial fishing school refunds $1m for subsidy errors over four years
Westport Deep Sea Fishing Ltd blamed an IT change for contributing to its miscalculation. Photo: 123RF A commercial fishing school has repaid more than $1 million to the government, after errors that included claiming funding for students who never attended. Westport Deep Sea Fishing Ltd said an IT change and a decision to waive fees for flood-affected students contributed to the problems. A Tertiary Education Commission report said the private tertiary institution received funding for 523 full-time equivalent students in the four years from 2020 to the end of 2023. An audit last year "revealed significant issues with how student data was reported" and a subsequent investigation found it should have received funding for only 413 FTE students, a difference of almost 110 FTE. The report said, before the audit, the commission had already recovered $264,079 in fees-free funding, due to breaches of the scheme's funding agreement between 2020-23. It said the audit also found a course that made up 0.0333 of a course of study was incorrectly entered as 0.333, meaning the school received $3000 more per student enrolment than it should have. "This resulted in an indicative funding recovery of $354,081 for 116 students," the report said. The investigation found 122 students (109 FTE) were invalid enrolments. The report said the school confirmed it "preloaded" a lot of students into its 2023 student data return, "but had failed to remove any enrolments which did not eventuate or where the learner did not meet the requirements for a confirmed learner enrolment". It said the school also claimed funding for nine students who had been granted recognition of prior learning, meaning the school awarded them credit for existing knowledge, without actually providing any tuition. The report said the investigation found the school needed to repay a further $633,550. "WDSF has acknowledged the invalid enrolments that were identified during this work, attributing the errors to administrative oversights," the report said. "As indicated above, the preloading of enrolments in the 2023 SDR, without sufficient removal of any learners who did not progress to a full enrolment, has created significant overfunding." It said the school entered a repayment plan and the money would be repaid by June 2025. "The TEC notes that, while a number of issues were identified, WDSF management and staff have engaged openly and co-operatively throughout the audit and investigation process," the report said. School owner Peter Maich told RNZ the fees-free repayment followed a decision to waive fees for students who were not able to attend courses, due to flooding in Bay of Plenty. He said the school was told that, because it was not charging a fee, it should not have claimed fees-free funding, which at the time covered the first year of fees for first-time tertiary students. Maich said a change in IT provider for data returns to the Tertiary Education Commission resulted in duplicate enrolments. He said the failure to remove students from its 2023 data return was due to the school being audited during the period it would normally remove non-attenders from its system. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
18 hours ago
- RNZ News
ACT rally to focus on supermarkets, free speech, economy
FOR SUNDAY AM ACT is holding their annual rally on Sunday in Auckland. Shown: ACT leader David Seymour at last year's rally in Auckland. Photo: RNZ / MARIKA KHABAZI The ACT Party is hosting its annual "Free & Equal" rally in Auckland, as it takes stock of the first half of its term in government and unveils a policy to help competition in the supermarket sector. ACT leader David Seymour said the Sunday event was a chance to look back at what had been achieved, as well as forward towards "what New Zealand needs from us and from the government over the next 15 months". But speaking to RNZ, he rejected the notion it marked the start of the election campaign, saying the best campaigning is simply doing "our job in government". The rally will feature policy updates from ACT ministers and MPs, as well as a keynote speech from Seymour, currently deputy prime minister, and an international guest speaker that is causing concern for a group in Pōneke. ACT MP Cameron Luxton will MC the event, and ACT ministers due to speak are Brooke van Velden, Nicole McKee, Karen Chhour, Andrew Hoggard and Simon Court. Updates will include outlining progress on crime, economic reform, and reducing regulatory burdens, as well as on the government's policy programme. This will be an opportunity for the party to outline to its supporters the progress made while in government, and look ahead to the second half of the political term. The party will also outline its policy to tackle the lack of competition in the supermarket sector, which will likely look at cutting red tape to help overseas players get a foothold. Seymour said the coalition was elected to tackle the cost of living, crime and co-governance, and added that the country now faces a "challenge with health." But he said in each of those areas the government could point to "significant progress", while acknowledging there were still "substantial challenges" - particularly around the cost of living. "Our challenge is to see economic growth occur so that salaries grow in a real way, keeping up with the increase in prices they've faced." Asked whether - like NZ First - the halfway point was an opportunity to turn into campaign mode, Seymour said no, because it was "important that we do our job in government." "That's the best campaigning that you can do," he said. Seymour acknowledged there would be a different set of issues in 2026 than what was present in 2023, and if that wasn't the case, "it means that we haven't done a very good job of addressing the tasks they gave us". "So we do need to start thinking about the next election, but it's not here yet." In terms of what ACT supporters had been indicating the key issues were, Seymour said there had been "six years of long trouble" starting with the terror attacks in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic, then inflation and high interest rates, recession and unemployment. "Now we face, probably the most uncertain geopolitical situation in several generations. "What we need is some hope to stop scapegoating, to start problem solving, really rally together as the pioneering nation that we can be so that we can address some of those long term problems around productivity, healthcare, cost of living, and really just having a sense that now we're getting somewhere." Last year, the rally was sold out and broadcaster Paul Henry's keynote speech had more than 200,000 views online. ACT described its annual gathering as an opportunity to connect with supporters, outline the party's policy direction, and foster open debate on the country's future. The latest RNZ Reid research poll, taken after the release of the Budget in May, had ACT down 2.8 points to 6.8 percent . More recently, the Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll, published on Thursday, showed ACT on 9.1 percent , unchanged from their last poll in June. There will also be an "international guest keynote" from Dr James Lindsay, an American author, mathematician, and "prominent advocate for free speech". "Dr. Lindsay is one of the world's leading lights in challenging ideological extremes," Seymour said. "His insights on defending free expression and liberal values are especially relevant in New Zealand today." The Pōneke Anti-fascist Coalition has raised concerns about the ACT party hosting Lindsay, claiming he peddled harmful conspiracies and held radical views. The group was founded in 2022 following the occupation at Parliament. Since then they've organised various rallies and community events to show opposition to "far right ideas". A member of the group, Anne Campbell, said she was concerned the party had invited Lindsay to "rark up their base" and pointed to an article on the Southern Poverty Law Centre website outlining claims by Lindsay. The SPLC was established in 1971 to carry on work from the civil rights movement in the United States of America. Its website states it works in partnership with communities to "dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people". The SPLC article highlighted statements by Lindsay, including reference to the pride flag as "the flag of a hostile enemy": Screenshots show a tweet under Lindsay's handle @ConceptualJames. Lol what? It also highlighted a post on social media by Lindsay from 2023, saying "Drag Queen Story Hour is an initiation rite into the cult of Queer Gnosticism". Drag Queen Story Hour is an initiation rite into the cult of Queer Gnosticism. The tweet linked to a podcast on Lindsay's website stating "Queer Theory is the doctrine of a cult". The synopsis for the podcast told listeners to join Lindsay to "understand our danger." "This discussion will not only lay Queer Theory bare for the social-spiritual cult belief system that it is, but it will also make sense of the destructive phenomena like sexual graphic novels in our school libraries, Drag Queen Story Hour, and the relentless push for queer and trans everything into all aspects of our culture. Join him to understand our danger." Campbell said it was "really troubling" to bring these ideas into New Zealand and further "stoke that kind of hatred". She acknowledged Lindsay may not directly be "doing damage to minorities himself" but said it was "poisoning the well of political discourse and turning it further right". Seymour told RNZ he admired Lindsay's book Cynical Theories and met him while he was in New Zealand earlier in the year. "We got together, and we hit it off, and I think he's a very thoughtful and decent person." The Free Speech Union hosted Lindsay for a speaking tour earlier this year , where he also appeared on TVNZ's Q+A . In response to the concerns of the Pōneke Antifascist Coalition Seymour said he did not agree with the description of the pride flag as an enemy flag. "I march in the Pride Parade most years myself, so I wouldn't say that I agree with this. I wasn't aware that James Lindsay had said that. "If he has, it doesn't really bother me, because I've got lots of friends I disagree with, and I think it's healthy. "If I agreed with everything that everybody I associated with had ever said, we'd have a very boring place or maybe no friends." In regards to the claims about Drag Queen Story Time, Seymour said parents could decide for themselves who read stories to their children. "I don't really know why anyone else would think it was their business." The concerns were coming from a "pretty obscure extreme left so-called Anti-Fascist group," Seymour said. "They're entitled to their view, but I'm certainly not going to let them define what I think," he said. "People are a little tired of cancel culture and ideological purity tests." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
