The Herald on Sunday reveals former National Party president Michelle Boag has picked up the contract to recruit the third tier of executives for the Auckland super city while also being an unpaid campaign adviser for John Banks’ mayoral campaign.
Welcome to the Auckland super city. That Boag and Banks say in the story they can’t see any conflict of interest says it all. Snout wedged so firmly in trough all perspective has been lost.
How on earth can Boag be expected to recruit what should be a politically independent public service to run the super city when she is also running the election campaign of the Right’s mayoral candidate?
Says Boag:
My networks are such that I had to be very careful about keeping me away from that tender process. I can’t help knowing the people that I know. I have very good relationships with a great number of people. The trouble for me is I’m a well-connected person.
I’m not saying Boag shouldn’t ever work in this town because her networks are so good, nor that she personally interfered in the tender process. But to work for the Banks campaign while recruiting the executives who are going to run the Council’s business? Please.
To say it is not a good look is an under-statement. It is about as damaging to the super city’s democratic legitimacy as the fact that Rodney Hide is going to hand pick the boards of directors of the commercial entities that are going to run the bulk of the Council’s business in secret, instead of letting the newly elected Council appoint them.
Aucklanders could be forgiven for asking whether this is a backdoor way of funding Banks’ campaign. Michelle Boag gets a million-dollar contract from the super city, and in return she works for Banks for free. With Transition Agency chair Mark Ford her former client, Agency board members Rob Fisher and John Waller fellow members of the Eden Park Trust Board, and Jenny Shipley a fellow principal in her recruitment company, this is getting way too cozy.
I want to know if there was an open public tender. I’ll have an Official Information Act request on Mark Ford’s desk shortly asking for the documents relating to the tender process that led to Michelle Boag getting the recruitment contract, including the evaluation criteria.
One may be forgiven for thinking it was only Winston that was there for the baubles of power!
“Michelle Boag has picked up the contract to recruit the third tier of executives for the Auckland super city while also being an unpaid campaign adviser for John Banks’ mayoral campaign.”
I love her ‘the trouble with me’ explanation. Michelle, the trouble with you is that you are deluded at best here and at worst you are a liar.
Great work, Phil, unearthing this smelly little deal. Someone will have to watch the appointments to all these new council companies very closely to ensure they are not used as kick-backs to tory cronies running this super city set up. These people should be shamed of themselves, looting the spoils before the ink is even dry. Even Huey Long had a sense of style.
The concern is that senior public servants come in several versions. All tend to be professional, but there is a fracturing along the line between those who have absorbed the neo-liberal/business efficiency agenda as an act of faith, and those that seek to remain professionally neutral (however difficult it is to be so). The make-up of those 50 or so jobs will determine to a significant degree the ability of elected representatives on the proposed new council to exert democratic controls over council policies and the CCOs. It is not difficult to see how a Key/Hide-driven agenda, coupled to Momentum’s advice on short-listing, coupled to the ideological preferences of the selection panel(s), might inexorably lead to certain types of outcome. The appointments made will be scrutinised with great care by many people with experience in both local and central government.
Too right, top job. Crucial that the left makes a good fist of this one – rip into this disgusting mess with a vengence – maybe a full-page ad in the granny “Democracy under Attack!” and repeat the tories’ own “Corrupt! Corrupt!” back at em ad nauseam with bells on. It’s Superdictatorship full steam ahead, damn the communities.
(and still reckon it’s worth a peep at the so-called “efficiences” from the last big amalgamations in 89. Anecdote indicates a transfer of rate burden from big to wee – ie no benefit at all to Joe P, the current move likely to make things worse. The rates enquiry recommended scrapping the super-regressive UAGC too, might be worth a mention along the way)
Hardly unusual in little ole NZ, I guess she will be working alongside Liala Harre the other staunch Nat supporter.
What a beat-up. Boag didn’t have anything to do with the bid. Momentum are the best executive recruitment company in the country. Boag isn’t working on the recruitment process. There is no conflict of interest Twyford. If you had ever worked in the private sector you would know how stupid your claim is.
Jennifer, Phil Twyford didn’t “unearth” anything. It was in the paper. Phil Twyford is simply a repeater.
@”Once a Labourite”: that would be the irreproachably correct and transparent private sector of which you write? The one which has been shown to be so upright over the last two years, the one in which Chinese walls work so well, in which there is never insider-trading, or the quiet drink on a Friday night, or in the Koru lounge, to make sure everyone is on the right page? of course, no – that’s the sharing of information, which makes decision-making in the market the success that it is. Silly old Mr Twyford – fancy thinking that there could be any grounds for concern about Ms Boag and her various incarnations. I am now thoroughly at ease as a result of your unsolicited testimonial for Momentum, Ms Boag and Capitalism.
@ “Once A Labourite” – You obviously have a very dim view of private sector ethics, which I don’t share. And I dont know why you think I havent worked in the private sector. I started a business, ran it for nine years, annual turnover $3 million; and have served on the board and senior management team of a multinational group with annual turnover approx half billion dollars. How does that compare with your private sector experience?
This is the problem with the scorched earth policy of Rodney- the administration of the new Auckland council will spend the first ten years of its life re-structuring and re-organising itself before it will be able to achieve anything.
Whoever is appointed by ATA and the Interim CEO will be seen as a political appointment (no matter how deserving they may be). The new council will ask for a re-structure because they won’t like what ATA gives them, then they will apppoint a new CEO when the interim CEO finsihes his contract term. What do you think teh cahnaces of them being happy with the ATA-Rodney Hide appointed CEO? . The permanent CEO will want appoint his or her confidants and spend large amounts of money getting rid of the senior management that was point in place by ATA.
Keeping and re-modelling the existing structures and transferring responsibilities would have been infinitely more manageable.
Reported today:
That is great that the Auckland Transition Agency says it ran an open public tender process. I look forward to seeing the documents.
However I want to stress that the allegation of conflict of interest is fundamentally about the impropriety of a politial partisan like Ms Boag vetting and recruiting the people who should be politically neutral public servants of the new super city.
I maintain it is a very bad look. How can any potential employee for those level 3 executive positions have confidence they will get a fair hearing when they know Mayor Banks’ pro bono PR adviser is doing the vetting? Given the conflict of interest how can the people of Auckland have confidence that the appointments won’t reflect the growing public view that the entire exercise is a political jack up by Hide, the Nats, and the Auckland business elite?
Banks defends himself by saying Boag is “an honest and ethical person”. Would that be the same Michelle Boag who was done like a dinner some years back for filming a court case and lying to the judge about it?
Phil, are you counting your time with Oxfam as private sector? Surely not. Oxfam is not for profit and having been able to get Mike Moore to give you world bank money is not what those of us who have worked in the private sector- and for large corporations – would count as private sector experience.
No, Phil worked for TradeAid. And that business is more ethical and private than many so called ‘private’ sector businesses suckling on the govt’s teat gettting corporate welfare.
@ william – First and at the risk of being nit-picky, Mike Moore never worked for the World Bank, and Oxfam doesnt get its money from the World Bank, and most of Oxfam’s income comes from private sources. But second, I am interested to know why you think running an NGO is so different from running a business? NGOs generally have a ‘public good’ mission but in almost every other respect they are private sector organisations. They operate in highly competitive markets. If they don’t make money they fall over. They hire and fire staff, sell goods and services, keep an eye on cashflow, maintain their assets, manage risk, protect their brands, report to stakeholders, account to the broader community for what they do, focus on the bottom line, look after their balance sheets, and deliver value to their customers (donors) and other stakeholders.
@ Chris – It was Oxfam.
You’ve probably seen this but it’s sickening: http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/waiheke-marketplace/3292216/Power-couple-plans-exit
latest: Attempts by the Auckland Transition Agency to downplay the politicisation of the recruitment process around the new super city management team won’t wash with the hundreds of senior managers applying for the jobs, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Phil Twyford.
http://labour.org.nz/news/ata-must-accept-boag-company-mistake-and-act-it
[...] see Heather McCracken’s original story in the Herald on Sunday, my Red Alert posts from Sunday and Wednesday, Thursday’s Herald story by Derek Cheng, the transcript from question time, and [...]