New Zealand’s gambling market was shocked when it was revealed that the government would stop funding the Problem Gambling Foundation. The decision seemed to come out of nowhere, leaving industry professionals to wonder what happened. Now, it has been revealed that two of the panel members involved in the decision had a conflict of interest.
The New Zealand Herald reports that there were six members on the evaluation panel: three officials from the Health Ministry, one health consultant, one representative of the Internal Affairs Department and one from the Heath Funding Agency. According a report PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), two of the panel members that were not from the Health Ministry had potential conflicts of interest.
One of the panel members had a conflict with one provider. The member did not evaluate that particular provider’s proposal but evaluated all others in the region. The other panel member had worked for one of the providers but this particular conflict of interest was overlooked by the Ministry of Health. PWC then compared the scoring of the two members in question to the others.
The analysts did not find any evidence of bias, but the report offered some cautionary advice: “MoH should remain aware that the market could perceive that these two panel members could have unduly influenced other panel members' scoring of proposals in their joint panel moderation sessions”. Now that this information has been released, concerns may be raised about the tender process.
Industry professionals were certainly caught off guard when it was announced that the Salvation Army would take over much of the Problem Gambling Foundation’s funding, so it can be expected that questions will be raised. This is an interesting twist in this intriguing story.
We will keep you updated as further developments are revealed.
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