Nicola Willis denies Social Investment Agency has lost focus

Wednesday, 15 July 2026

Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis has defended her agency’s performance after criticisms from Labour spokesperson Jan Tinetti in Invercargill last week.

Tinetti said the Social Investment Agency’s role had been muddied from what it should be — a body that brought focus to how contracts from the likes of the Ministry of Social Development, Oranga Tamariki and health and education ministries should best be targeted and co-ordinated.

Instead it had become just another contract-procuring body itself, and small but well-functioning initiatives such as Koha Kai in Southland (now rebranded as Southern Kai) had lost funding under an agenda to redirect funding to larger-scale providers.

While some reform had been needed, far too many of the more locally-connected providers, who were also more adroit at reacting to changes within their communities, had lost their funding, Tinetti said.

Willis said the agency was backing services that delivered results and making it easier for community organisations to help the people who needed them most.

It had already consolidated 76 separate funding lines across 50 contracts and eight government agencies into simpler agreements, she said.

These ”let providers spend less time on paperwork and more time supporting people’’.

“The success of that approach is already driving wider change, with work now under way to simplify more than 800 government contracts worth around $2.8 billion, so more funding is focused results, not bureaucracy,’’ she said.