Gail Alexan­der

De­ci­sions will be made on the ba­sis of the Fi­nance Min­istry's au­dit of the Life Sport pro­gramme, ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in an­oth­er three weeks or so, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai con­firmed yes­ter­day.Howai said the min­istry was in­ter­view­ing both sides, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry as well as Life Sport of­fi­cials, on the is­sue.He added that the Fi­nance Min­istry had to do so "be­cause (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has said, 'this is the sit­u­a­tion' and we said 'okay, if that is so, ob­vi­ous­ly you made a state­ment on the ba­sis of in­for­ma­tion, so let us know what in­for­ma­tion you have.'So we're al­so in­ter­view­ing the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and so."

Howai spoke about the is­sue dur­ing the Sen­ate's lunch break yes­ter­day. He said he had seen a head­line on the is­sue but had not re­ceived any re­port and the au­dit of­fi­cers had not giv­en him any in­ter­im or fi­nal re­port yet.Howai added: "They in­di­cat­ed they need­ed some ad­di­tion­al time as it is 41 cen­tres they have to vis­it to con­firm things and they have to con­firm with every­one, al­so the na­ture of the con­fir­ma­tion tends to be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult."For ex­am­ple, some­one may have signed a re­ceipt but whether the mon­ey went to all the par­ties it's sup­posed to, that is the piece that is re­quir­ing a lit­tle more work than they had orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to do. As of now, I don't have any fur­ther up­date oth­er than the fact the work con­tin­ues."

Howai said when the au­dit start­ed, he had thought it would be done with­in three to four weeks and they should have fin­ished.But based on what he was see­ing now, Howai said they would prob­a­bly need an­oth­er three weeks be­fore they get every­thing com­plet­ed.Howai said he on­ly had about four of­fi­cers work­ing on the au­dit and they had to in­ter­view every­one, vis­it all cen­tres and get cor­rob­o­ra­tion from those 41 cen­tres."So it's tak­ing a bit longer... they have to be ac­cu­rate, as de­ci­sions will be made on the ba­sis of what­ev­er they put to­geth­er and they don't want to make a de­ci­sion and say, 'we made a mis­take.' They have to be sure they get the in­for­ma­tion," he said.He added that the au­dit team was deal­ing first with some of the peo­ple who were more dif­fi­cult to lo­cate."So while we could get hold of them, we will," he said.

Safe­ty con­cerns raised

Howai al­so said the Fi­nance Min­istry had to use some Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry staff to as­sist with vis­its, since some fi­nance of­fi­cers ex­pressed con­cern about their phys­i­cal safe­ty in some ar­eas.Arrange­ments were made for them to have se­cu­ri­ty that might be re­quired in vis­it­ing some cen­tres.Deputy di­rec­tor of phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and sports in the Sport Min­istry, Ruth Marchan, Life Sport pro­gramme di­rec­tor Cor­nelius Price and an­oth­er of­fi­cial have claimed to have re­ceived death threats in con­nec­tion with the pro­gramme. Marchan and Price are now said to be un­der po­lice guard for their safe­ty.

On whether Life Sport was func­tion­al, Howai said it wasn't re­al­ly, due to the in­ter­views be­ing done.On if it was sus­pend­ed as a re­cent re­port claimed, Howai said the pro­gramme had been trans­ferred to Grif­fith's min­istry. He said the trans­fer was ap­proved and con­firmed by Cab­i­net note, adding Grif­fith was "on top of it ful­ly now."Howai said he had al­so asked Grif­fith to con­sid­er what ar­eas should be cut out or sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in some way.He said there were ob­vi­ous­ly some ar­eas where things were work­ing well and al­so oth­ers where per­haps it may not be.

"I asked if he could pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to those and see if we could cut those down be­cause I don't want the min­istry to be in a po­si­tion to con­tin­ue to make pay­ments for some­thing that shouldn't re­al­ly be paid for. "I did ask that he deal with those spe­cif­ic ar­eas as soon as it came over to him," Howai said.On Creed's ab­sences from the Sport Min­istry, Howai said the min­is­ter would have made a re­quest to the head of the pub­lic ser­vice for a re­place­ment to han­dle rev­enue is­sues at the Sport Min­istry.