NZ News
Several historic gravestones vandalised at Auckland cemetery
Several historic gravestones were vandalised at a cemetery in the Auckland suburb of Parnell on Monday.
Police said they received a report just after 5pm that at least eight gravestones at St Stephen’s Chapel had been pushed over and broken up.
The Dean of Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral the Very Reverend Anne Mills has described the destruction as senseless.
She told RNZ the vandalism was discovered by a volunteer who also worshipped at the chapel.
“The sandstone ones are very, very damaged,” she said.
“The marble ones, you know, have gone into three, or four, or five pieces, but of course the sandstone headstones are just in smithereens.”
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Mills said they had had families from around the country and internationally getting in contact.
It had been traumatic for those left wondering whether it was their history being denigrated, she said.
“We’ve had a lot of emails and texts overnight from people all over New Zealand and all around the world, asking if it’s their particular family’s headstone that has been vandalised.”
“They were some of the early settlers in Tāmaki Makaurau, and in Parnell, and so they have made a significant contribution to the city that we know today, and, you know, they’re giants whose shoulders we stand on, and we wouldn’t be who we are today [without] the incredible history that is held in those graves.”
The graveyard was one of the oldest in the country, Mills believed.
She said she was saddened by the vandalism, and had no idea why anyone would target the graves.
“For me, it just seems senseless and unnecessary,” Mills said.
The chapel is used weekly for services, and Mills described it as a sacred site.
It would take time to determine next steps.
“That will need to be worked out, fortunately it’s not something that we face all that often.
“That will be a process that the families whose headstones have been damaged, the city council, and the absolutely amazing group of volunteers who have for years looked after the grounds around the gravestones, and have been very proactive in maintaining the headstones as best they can.
“I think that will be a process that will need to be worked out over the next while.”
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
‘Straight vandalism at its worst’
Anne Morris, who is president of the Heritage Roses NZ, which maintains the cemetery, said the damage was heartbreaking.
“It’s absolutely shocking,” she said.
“It’s just straight vandalism at it’s worst.”
Morris said the group’s restorer had taken many of the fragments of the gravestones away, and would start restoring them as soon as he could.
The estimated cost of repairs were around $35,000.
“We’re talking about big money, because they all have to be glued together…”
She said they expected to set up a Give-a-Little page to raise money to rebuild the tombstones.
‘A disgraceful act’
Auckland Council area operation manager Martin Wong said it was aware of the incident.
“This is a disgraceful act and our hearts go out to the descendants of those lying in rest here,” he said.
“The graves are maintained by volunteers, whose efforts have been helped by two Auckland Council grants over the last six years.
“The council manages the land, gardens and trees at this closed cemetery site, but does not look after the graves, as these are private property owned by the descendants. That said, we will assist to sensitively tidy up the damage and assist the police with their enquiries.”
He said they were also investigating damage to council-owned toilets at the nearby Judges Bay over the weekend, where sinks, taps, and toilets were removed.
Anyone with information was asked to report it to police online or call 105 using the reference number 250707/2117.
Source: RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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