Which of these is correct?
1. Former National Party president and John Banks’ mayoral campaign adviser Michelle Boag telling the Herald on Sunday she had nothing to do with her recruitment agency Momentum bidding for the contract to recruit 50 senior executives for the Auckland Super City:
It was a squeaky-clean process…A lot of people involved in the ATA I know very well. I purposely kept myself out of the tender process….My networks are such that I had to be very careful about keeping me away from that tender process.
Or:2. Momentum’s business proposal to the Auckland Transition Agency which profiles Michelle Boag as a member of the project team and specifically identifies her as responsible for recruiting the position of the super city’s chief spin doctor, Manager Communications and Public Affairs.
In my view Ms Boag’s public statements on this have been misleading to say the least.
Just as alarming is the apparent inability of the Auckland Transition Agency to see a conflict of interest that is staring them in the face. Ironically, Momentum’s business proposal even said “Momentum has no conflicts of interest to declare.”
Hang on. Michelle Boag is on the public record as an unpaid campaign adviser to the Right’s mayoral candidate John Banks. And she features in the bid (see p12 of the proposal), and will be vetting people who should be politically neutral public servants to run the super city. And you are telling me that didn’t ring alarm bells at the Auckland Transition Agency?
How many Michelle Boags are there in this town? Surely this is the same Michelle Boag who is a former President of the National Party. Who recruited John Key and installed a new generation of National Party MPs. Who had the Winebox Inquiry filmed under false pretences and was found by Sir Ronald Davison to have deceived the Commission of Inquiry and found guilty of contempt.
More unintentional irony from Momentum’s business proposal to the ATA:
The (recruitment) process must be objective and able to reduce any perception of bias; transparent, independent, fair and equitable.
How is that transparency and fair thing going now?
I asked Rodney Hide about this in Question Time today. He didn’t seem to know about the discrepancy between Boag’s public statements and the tender documents. He advised me to ask the Auditor General to investigate. So I will.
If John Key wants Aucklanders to have any confidence in his Government’s handling of the Auckland Super City, he needs to tell Hide to pull the Auckland Transition Agency into line, to cancel the contract with Momentum and re-open the tender process.
The whole process is looking more and more like a giant exercise in handing out jobs to the National Party’s mates. National Party ideologue and favoured pollster David Farrar is being paid by the Department of Internal Affairs to poll on the super city. (Hat tip The Standard.) The third super city bill has Rodney Hide appointing the directors to the boards of the corporate entities being set up to run Council operations.
This is clearly a trick question. Nobody in their right mind could think ‘point 1′ was even an option.
Yep, looks like a conflict of interest.
I’m surprised that someone of Michelle Boag’s experience has been so foolish as to directly contradict herself over such a sensitive matter. Although, she was responsible for National’s biggest thrashing in decades in 2002, so maybe she’s not as good as her own PR suggests? Banks had better watch out. Seriously, though, this is very damaging for the government which has put all it’s Auckland eggs in one slowly unravelling basket.
You cant even catch a ferry in Auckland without Michelle knowing about it
LOL
excellent! Go Phil.
Someone really needs to hammer her. Isn’t Laila Hare working in there somewhere?
Laila Harre?
that would be right. Anybody whos anybody in Auckland is ‘on board’ or has a ‘finger in the pie’ except the the bloody ratepayers.
Government by the elites, how thats very American style democracy
Ghost
MSM, especially the Herald isn’t nearly as up in arms about this desecration of democracy as it/they were over the EFA…
I cannot believe how this is being rail roaded, without the media even blinking… Auckland is essentially being sold, but no money is changing hands to the elite “business men” of NZ. THAT is who will be Directors of the elector light CCO’s. The irony is that until recently some of our highly regarded businessmen were heads of finance companies which collapsed…
Eric Watson for one… GREAT businessman unless you trusted his expertise and placed money with him.
“… David Farrar is being paid by the Department of Internal Affairs to poll on the super city”.
What the hell is going on? If there were few polling agencies in NZ then the DIA would have an excuse, but there are numerous long standing companies who have been conducting such polls for a lot longer than David Farrar. That a govt. department should hire a polling company owned and operated by a high profile, right wing National Party activist is worthy of a thorough investigation.
That should get Farrar’s bovver boys going
Tracey, they ‘elite’ are already shoulder tapping their mates, drawing up lists, and dividing up the spoils. It’s shocking and venal. If only the people knew. But as you say, the Herald is asleep at the wheel, even when their own polling shows 57 percent of Aucklanders want to keep their current councils now the true horror of the government’s super city is revealed. It reminds me of the tales of Huey Long’s Louisiana. No kidding. Boag is just the tip of the iceberg.
jennifer, agreed. It might go awry (sp) if Aucklanders do what the Brits did to Thatcher’s poll tax… refuse to pay. Perhaps we need to consider refusing to pay our rates to the new owners our assets which we never sold but which were stolen from us? National sure must have built up some HUGE debts being in Opposition for 9 years because the Directorships of this country are being carved up big time. I wonder who they already have lined up for RNZ?
Phil, did UMR ever conduct polls for Government departments in the last 10 years?
Ironic, isn’t it, that Rodney can’t decide what the powers of the local boards should be
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10616964
but he knows exactly who the directors of the CCOs should be.
Gordon McLaughlin made an interesting point on RNZ this afternoon, essentially that the reorganisation of Auckland is not about democracy (because it weakens democracy, and is in all aspects being undertaken in an extremely undemocratic manner), rather it is about the theft of assets in the name of efficiency.
Democracy is meant to be democratic, and should not be sacrificed in the name of efficiency.
@ Luke – I dont know if they did Luke. But if they had it wouldnt be analagous anyway. UMR was not run by someone who was a leading political operative/propogandist for Labour.
I realise the Michelle Boag affair has to take precedence at this point in time, but the revelation concerning David Farrar’s commercial relationship with a government department is equally alarming. It has to be suspected that it’s not the first such contractural arrangement and is unlikely to be the last. That a person as closely aligned to the Nat govt. and John Key should be conducting these polls has serious implications for the neutrality of the public service. Who are the ultimate beneficiaries – and at the tax payers’ expense? The National Party?
“UMR was not run by someone who was a leading political operative/propogandist for Labour.”
We don’t know that for though do we? Anyone of the authors at any political blog like DPF’s could be an analyst for UMR.
That’s scary Anne
[...] 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 the video. [...]