The Helen Clark Foundation is a Charitable Trust, registered by the Charities Commission. It proudly proclaims, "We are an independent, non-partisan public policy think tank based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland". If you believe it is independent & non-partisan, you'd believe anything. It says its Board is "independent". Its Chair is Former PM Clark's husband. It has small assets though quite large income, presumably coming from the fund-raising powers of its Patron, Helen Clark. What's most curious is that its "partner" is a public university in NZ, namely Auckland University of Technology (AUT). The Foundation says AUT "works with us to share expertise & resources to deliver evidence-based perspective & public policy research". Hang on .. AUT shares staff time & resources? Does it provide free office space in central Auckland as part of that deal? Its hard to locate rent paid in the Foundation's accounts. Did I miss it? Resources provided by AUT inevitably come from tax-payer pockets. Is that why the Clark Foundation wants to say it's non-partisan? Its events & publications, often about environmental & inequality issues, don't look that way at all to me. Why invite anti-inequality campaigners like Max Rashbrooke to its events, though not dream of inviting a guy like me, even though I know Clark's husband a bit, being a past colleague? From former Labour Minister Grant Robertson shacking up at Otago, to Clark using AUT's resources, this political takeover of our Universities has got to stop.
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