Reading the hardcopy Herald over lunch I spotted an article under the heading “Ministry boss apologises over spend-up”, referring to Mr Leauanae, the chief executive of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage (MCH) as regards the events surrounding his farewell from his previous role as head of the Ministry of Pacific Peoples (MPP) and his welcome to MCH. This was the key bit
“on my watch”? He seemed to be trying to minimise what PSC had found had actually happened (written up in my post yesterday) and suggest that he himself hadn’t done much, but had after all just been the CE (so, in some sense, formally responsible but not really to blame). It was as if his wayward former underlings had done stuff that didn’t relate to him at all. What the PSC report actually described was Leauanae having accepted $7500 of taxpayer gifts himself at the farewell and then accepting $4000+ of travel for family members and friends for his welcome to MPP. (In addition of course to the rest of the extravagant $40000 spent in total on his farewell, as he moved from one small Wellington government department to another.)
As I noted on Twitter, one of the things the PSC report carefully never directly stated was quite when (a) the gifts were returned, and b) when the travel was reimbursed. It would have been easy for either the PSC report or Mr Leauanae to have given us specific dates, but they (obviously deliberately) chose not to. I have now lodged a couple of OIA requests to find out. Was it the day after the relevant events (say) or only after PSC started digging into the matter? The difference is likely to be quite important. If the former, one might take a more charitable view.
But the comments reported in the Herald prompted me to read the statement from Peter Hughes again more carefully. The lines Hughes will have been keen to see reported were
I thank Mr Leauanae for putting the matter right at the first opportunity.”
The “first opportunity” might suggest the day of the events or perhaps the day after. After all, as the full PSC reports note (carefully, without either evidence or further comment)
He advised it was always his intention to pay for his family and personal guests’ travel costs.
So on a casual reading you might have assumed it was all an oversight and was put right within a day or two.
But, from the Commissioner’s own statement, that can’t have been the case.
Perhaps the gifts really were returned very promptly (eg the night of the farewell function or at worst the day after), although the report/statement carefully does not give dates or times. (There is also that strange comment that he returned both the gifts and the money spent on them, which leaves questions as to whether the gifts had been able to be returned to the vendors for full refunds or not).
But that clearly wasn’t the case with the travel, because the second paragraph above says that it was the PSC review which uncovered the fact of this spending on Mr Leauanae’s family and friend’s travel, and that it was only in light of the review finding that he reimbursed MPP. And we know from the documents PSC released that they did not formally decide to look into the spending regarding the welcome to MCH until 19 June. That was eight months after the personal benefit to Mr Leauanae. That doesn’t seem even close to putting things right at the “first opportunity”, casts further doubt on Leauanae’s claim that he had always intended to pay for the travel himself, and strongly suggests someone with no strong sense of what is right and wrong when public money is being spent. Someone who still sits in a highly paid job as head of a New Zealand government department.
Peter Hughes was obviously somewhat constrained by the facts, but he consciously chose not to explicitly point out this timing, but to spin a story that would lead quick readers to think Leauanae had fixed things up straight away, not many months later only after the inquirers from his boss came calling.
Nothing in this story reflects at all well on Leauanae, and it really should be staggering that he goes on as a government department CE with, as far as the report suggests, no adverse consequences (he just repaid things when he finally got caught). Of course, it isn’t just the personal benefit, but the modelling and leadership (or lack of it) that will have led his former MPP underlings to think the lavish expenditure was ever acceptable, and the undisciplined processes etc reported last night in the Newshub story after they got hundreds of pages of documents from MPP. What gets you dismissed, or strongly encouraged to resign, when you hold a New Zealand government department CE role? Clearly not this record.
I’m also a bit surprised no one seems to have asked relevant ministers whether they have any confidence in Leauanae. In one of the weird bits of our legislation, they can’t sack him themselves, no matter (apparently) what he did, but the position of a CE would surely be untenable if the Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture and Heritage (as it happens the Deputy PM) indicated that they had no confidence in Leauanae. The PM has been reported as saying that the expenditure was unacceptable, but what of it? What is he going to do about it? He is, after all, the Prime Minister, and it is hard to believe that the Opposition parties will be leaping to the defence of Mr Leauanae.
Of course, it is always possible Hipkins and Sepuloni do still have confidence in Leauanae, even after what is already revealed about him (personal entitlement, weak and undisciplined financial management and people leadership etc). If so, that would be sadly telling. But you might have thought media outlets would at least ask whether they still have confidence in him, and if so why.
