cronyism

Labour is making much of crony appointments at the moment. From the sounds of it they will be implementing the Hipkins Standard quite forcefully when they get back in power.

Truth has helpfully published a list of crony appointments made during their term as a point of reference:

Most are former staffers, advisers, union flunkies, spouses of senior regime members, former MPs and some who were to become MPs.
All were appointed under Clark’s watch.
- Ross Armstrong,
- Lesley Soper,
- Simon Mitchell,
- Louisa Wall,
- Shane Jones,
- Graham Hill,
- Rosslyn Noonan,
- Warren Lindberg, Read more »

Everyone knows that Labour uses crony appointments to allow its office holders to earn a crust so Labour doesn’t have to pay them. Former Labour President Mike “Fat Tony” Williams was the prime example. Mike had a heap of board positions (five) paying him an awful lot of money and putting him well into the 1%. Di Yates was another Labour flunky bestowed with four board appointments presumably on the basis of her strong union affiliations and general uselessness.

Thanks to Chippie coming up with the Hipkins’ Standard, which we will assume is going to be Labour policy or Hipkins will be a hypocrite, Labour will no longer be able to use government appointments to fund their office holders.

This could be the single most valuable contribution Chippie makes to politics in New Zealand.

No longer will the tax payer be burdened by having useless Labour Party members, office holders, union hacks, hangers on and other bludgers on high paid government appointed boards. We should all thank Chippie for his valuable contribution to our country.

ᔥ NZ Herald

Even though Chris Hipkins attacked the wrong person he has still done us all a massive favour. In an intemperate rant about National appointing mates to the Health Promotion Agency he says the following:

Three National Party office-holders on one board, particularly given the nature of the board, with an advocacy role, it seems to me is pretty questionable.

He was concerned that the presence of three National members would heavily influence the agenda of the new organisation, which would create programmes on key areas such as alcohol use and obesity.

Great. When Labour come back into power we will be able to hold them to the “Hipkins Standard”. No one with any Labour Party connections, even if they have been out of parliament for more than a term, may be given any government appointment.

That should stop the kind of useless hacks that infest Labour being given any positions that cost the rest of us money.

Celia Wade-Brown funded her own campaign and did not accept anonymous donations. A politician of rare principle and just confirms my award of Politician of the Year for 2010.

Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown spent close to the $60,000 mayoral limit during her successful election campaign – with nearly all of it coming from her own pocket.

Losing incumbent Kerry Prendergast’s campaign cost just over $53,000 but more than $45,000 came from anonymous donations.

Wellington electoral officer Ross Bly has released the expenditure figures for candidates who stood in this year’s local body elections.

Ms Wade-Brown’s campaign cost $58,262 and all but $4859 of it came from her own funds.

I’ll bet that Celia Wade-Brown won’t be accused of hypocrisy or cronyism like Len Brown has been.

The other day I blogged about Len Brown’s Christmas card. I also submitted a LGOMA request for the costs.

I am yet to receive a reply but it looks like Len’s spin weasels have seen that there could be some impending damage and so ran off to the Herald with the numbers.

Brown’s mayoralty has been marred by allegations of cronyism after key members of his campaign team – and those who have helped him in the past – were appointed to jobs such as directors of council-controlled companies.

The latest issue involves Christmas cards sent from the mayor’s office – the company in the last-minute scramble to design the cards, business cards and letterheads is led by Mike Hutcheson, who advised Brown in his Supercity campaign.

The total value of the work, covering four separate orders between October 22 and December 12, was $9623.10.

They haven’t used Bernard Orsman like the cheap whore he has become, but they have milked a story out of Kieran Nash. No acknowledgement from Nash either about where he got the story from or where the charges of cronyism in Brown’s office have come from. That’s just rude.

Anyway the story is still about Len Brown’s wasteful ways. He has blown nearly 10 grand on a bloody christmas card. First it was credit cards that got him in trouble and now it is christmas cards.

Len Brown campaigned on being honest, and yet he just hands out jobs to his mates. Yet another Brown campaign team member has dipped his hands into the pockets of ratepayers. Not only that he banged on and on during the campaign about John Banks spending money on flowers and yet he has almost spent as much on a single bloody christmas card.

The Night-Mayor continues….as does the repeating of repeaters.

Before the local body election, the Labour spokesman for the homeless was constantly banging on about how Rodney Hide has stolen the city, how the CCOs were open to corrupt manipulation by Tory henchmen and how all of these things would be different under Labour.

Rodney Hide’s hand picked appointees to run the new corporatised Auckland have been announced.

Apart from Sir Don McKinnon and Mayor Bob Harvey most Aucklanders won’t know who they are. And that is the point: these people will now wield enormous power over local government in Auckland but they’ve been selected in secret by the Minister, without Aucklanders having a say.

Since the election virtually nothing has been heard from him. He certainly hasn’t utter a single word about the blatent cronysim with Len Brown’s “hand-picked appointees” where campaign workers were handed the lolly in a secret closed meeting. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear Phil Twyford’s comments on Len Brown’s process where his appointees were “elected in secret by the” Mayor, “without Aucklanders having a say”.

Perhaps he is keeping quiet  to stay in good with Len Brown since he knows he is tits at winning selections. He could well be needing a CCO job soon.

In the SST on Sunday Jonathan Marshall again busted Len Brown fro his pay off of campaign workers and golden handshakes, and this morning Len Brown excluded the public from the meeting to confer those favours on his campaign helpers.

For some bizarre reason Fairfax hasn’t seen fit to put Marshall’s story online, (read it here ) so I will have to quote from Bernard Orsman’s regurgitation this morning. First the golden parachute rort;

Former Papakura District Council chief executive Theresa Stratton has started work in Mayor Len Brown’s office weeks after receiving a redundancy payment of $209,730.

It is understood Ms Stratton has been able to keep the money because of an employment technicality.

She has gone from a full-time position in her old job to a three-year fixed-term contract as a senior planning adviser in the mayor’s office.

Her new contract does not have provision for redundancy.

Theresa Stratton should be made to pay back the parachute payment. It is unconscionable that the ratepayers of first Papakura District Council and second the new Auckland Council have been ripped off with the dodgy appointment processes surrounding the appointment of Theresa Stratton. Those processes are nowhere near as dodgy as the practices of secrecy and with-hunts being orchestrated by Len Brown over CCo appointments.

Richard Jeffrey and Pauline Winter, both members of Mr Brown’s mayoral campaign, will be paid $35,000 a year as directors of the Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development and Auckland Council Investments CCOs respectively.

Former Labour Party president Mike Williams – Mr Brown is a Labour Party member – and former Papakura Mayor John Robertson will make $52,500 and $35,000 a year as board directors of the Auckland Transport and Regional Facilities CCOs.

Last week, it was revealed that Mr Brown’s former chief executive at Manukau City Council, Leigh Auton, and former Manukau deputy mayor, Gary Troup, would be appointed to the property and regional facilities CCOs boards respectively.

They will each be paid $35,000 a year.

Mr Brown has refused to say anything about why he is putting so many close political allies forward for jobs at today’s CCO strategy and appointments subcommittee and whether Ms Stratton should pay back her redundancy.

Why won’t Len Brown tell us anything. He promised us he would be an open book. Is this his what he means when he says he will give us “straight answers, but always with a limit”.

It seems that Len is cultivating a culture of secrecy instead of the transperency that he promised us. Just today he is excluding the public from the meeting to appoint CCO board members, which is ironic because he demanded that CCOs hold meetings in public. It seems that Len Brown has standards for transparency that he likes to apply to others but not to himself. Not only is Len Brown secretive, but he is actually justifying and explaining it.

Members of the public have this morning been excluded from a meeting as Auckland councillors debate who will head the city’s Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).

Seven CCOs have been set up to deliver services and manage some of the council’s assets, such as Auckland Transport and the Waterfront Development Agency.

Salaries range from $35,000 to $52,000 for a CCO director’s work, which is essentially part time.

The council this morning passed a resolution to exclude the public from a meeting of the CCO strategy and appointments sub-committee, with only one Councillor, Jami-Lee Ross, voting against it.

Thank god there is one honest councillor in Jami-lee Ross. What a pity that Penny Hulse and Len Brown are running the city like secretive uber-lords.

However Mayor Len Brown defended the move, saying it was in order to protect the reputation of the CCO applicants.

Speaking to the committee before the motion was passed Ross said he was concerned the debate behind closed doors would mean the process would not be as transparent as possible.

He said he did not buy the argument that good people would not put themselves forward in the future if the CCO appointments were done in a public meeting.

“The final sign-off with identified people should be done publicly.”

He said there was no reason to have the vote behind closed doors.

Deputy mayor Penny Hulse spoke in favour of the excluding the public, saying she would be extremely uncomfortable for the applicants to have the committee discuss their credentials in public.

She said the applicants had a legal right to have their reputations protected and also the council had to protect itself over any privacy issues.

Brown agreed the decision to exclude the public was to protect the applicants’ reputation.

“Much of what we do in this committee will be a matter of public record but this is the issue where we are protecting people’s reputation.”

WTF…the reputation of key Brown campaign helpers? The reputation of Mike Williams? The reputation of the man who is the bagman for the singer at the now infamous and secret Volare dinner, a dinner that Len Brown broke his own council rules over and one he still is refusing to tell about, the same dinner that Richard Jeffrey attended, the same Richard Jeffreyy who donated money to Len Brown’s campaign in 2007…that reputation…yeah that needs to be protected.

This is nothing short of cronyism and political payoffs. Who ever is advising Len Brown is either stupid or not being listened to. This must be what Len Brown means when he said “Transparency is not a perfect thing,” and “Transparency doesn’t just happen in a perfect world.”

Clearly this is the limits that Len Brown speaks of when giving us the straight answers. So far we have seen almost no impact on the 100 projects in 100 days but rapid spending on flash new chairs to sit in, jobs for the liars and cheats who covered his tracks at Manukau and now jobs for hacks who patted his back and cajoled the churches in South Auckland. Len Brown might just be the fastest moving trougher on the planet.

Documents leaked to WOBH show some concerning arrangements at the Manukau City Council regarding the issuing of one council tender to an organisation with close links to Mayor Len Brown.

Len Brown moved at a full council meeting that an independent Council committee’s decision to award a contract and then to award a contract to a former Councillor and Labour supporter who’s organisation lost the bidding process. This sounds very much like a “jobs for the boys” over-riding of council best-practice for no other reason than Len Brown is best mates with the Chairman of the losing bidder.

The trust that he had the council give the contract to is chaired by a former Labour member of the Manukau City Council, and friend. The contract decision of the council’s Tenders Panel was overturned in a “jobs for the boys” type fashion to give the contract to the existing contractor that a number of councillors and the Mayor have ties to.

My understanding of the documents I have received is that this issue now involves the Auditor-General’s office, though it is unlikely to progress through that avenue because the bar for them to look at Council procedures and Council votes is extremely high. Nevertheless there is a smell about this worse than a fish market on Saturday afternoon.

The contract in question related to the provision of community-based education programmes for Nga Tapuwae Community Centre in Mangere. The contract is for the period 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2012, by which time the Manukau City Council will have ceased to exist.

In 2009 the Manukau City Council issued an RFP. Interested parties were asked to submit a proposal to run the management of the aforementioned community center and the associated community and educational programmes.

Since 2000, the centre had been run by the Tamaki Ti Raro Trust. In 2006 that contract was renewed until December 2007, four subsequent variations extended their contracts to June 2010. the council then put the contract up for tender for a fixed cost of $85,000 p.a.

The council officers ran a competitive tender process known as known the Weighted Attribute Method. At no stage in the tender process was Tamaki Ti Raro trust ever ahead of the eventual winner, The Challenge Trust, in any aspect of the tender requirements. The council officers then sent their report and recommendation to the Council’s Tender Panel. The Tendes panel then approved the the recommendations of the council officers in line with the councils own Procurement Delegations Manual and passed the final decision on to the Policy and Activities Committee.

So far everything is above board. A competitive tender has been held, council officers have conducted their evaluation and awarded the contract to The Challenge Trust (99), with Tamaki Ti Roro Trust scoring (91). The Tenders Panel made up of councillors accepted the recommendation of the council officers and the findings of the evaluation. Then things start going awry.

The whole-of-council Policy and Activities Committee meeting was held. Mayor Len Brown moved that the contract be awarded instead to the Tamaki Ti Roto Trust in direct contradiction of both the tender process, the council officers recommendations and the recommendations of the Tenders Panel. Bear in mind that this a contract for the pending over nearly $200,000 of ratepayers money.

The reasons given by Mayor Len Brown, Alf Filipaina and Anne Candy, all Labour councillors or supportive of Labour were spurious to say the least. They suggested that the hard work and due diligence of the council officers be overturned because Tamaki Ti Raro Trust “understands” Mangere. This is hard to fathom because the trust is almost exclusively Maori in make-up whereas the Mangere Ward of the Manukau City Council is mostly Pasifika (62%), second European(20%) and third Maori (18%) according to the 2006 census. Maori do not even make up a fifth of the population.  The other reason cited were that the Trust was run by a dynamic Maori woman and the Chairman was a former Manukau City Councillor, John Kerr, with longstanding personal relationships with many existing councillors including Mayor Len Brown. What wasn’t mentioned that the longstanding personal relationships were because they were all members of the Labour Party.

The council then vote 9-5 in favour of throwing the competitive tender process results completely out the window and appointing Tamaki Ti Raro Trust as the winner despite finishing a distant second in the tender process.

My sources amongst council officers suggest that this is the first time this has happened in the history of the Manukau city council that they can recall. What makes even more appalling is that it wasn’t based on any performance or technical evidence it was based on feelings, understandings, and personal relationships. The Manukau City Council abandoned due process. As the letter to the Auditor General states,”the decision reflects a departure from any pretence of probity, objectivity and independence.”

This decision is surely a prima facie case of Labour Party cronyism. If Len Brown thinks this sort of nonsense is circumspect and honest then he is ill-qualified to lead a united Auckland City.