The topic may not be of much interest to core or regular readers of this blog, but this is about seeing an issue through to the end.
My post on Saturday highlighted how the Public Service Commission seems to keep just making stuff up in defence of (a) themselves, and (b) the Commissioner’s protege, Mr Leauanae formerly of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples and now CE of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. They tell it the way it isn’t or wasn’t, but perhaps the way they would prefer it to have been. It is simply dishonest, and discredits the institution (and the government that is responsible for the Commission). Leauanae did not pay back money for months after he had inappropriately received benefits, and never took any pro-active steps, and PSC’s report did not criticise Leauanae for having recused himself from involvement in planning for his farewell, let alone call it out “clearly and strongly, and [..] on the public record”.
But yesterday I had another OIA response from PSC. I’d asked about all and any contact (written or otherwise) with ministers or their offices about the MPP/Leauanae affair. And it prompted me to stand back a little.
First, in case you were wondering about advice to ministers, this is the full response on that point.
In other words, over the eight months from start to finish of this investigation and review, into what was revealed to be grossly inappropriate spending in a public service department, including considerable personal benefit for a senior public servant, PSC never once provided anything in writing to the Minister for the Public Service (when the process started that was still Hipkins), or to any of the portfolio ministers of the departments Leauanae had been (MPP) or was (MCH) chief executive of. Had some journalists asked the Minister for the Public Service in, say, early January about this issue/investigation, we are to suppose he would not even have been aware of the matter. Doesn’t seem very much in line with “no surprises”.
There was also the question of when PSC was first aware. I’ve already noted how odd it was – or would be if PSC had been doing its job, and some culture of excess and entitlement had not apparently taken hold in parts of the public service – that PSC itself seemed not to know about any of this until (mid December) two months after the events and spending in question (last October). According to the PSC report released in August, things got underway this way.
Perhaps. But this latest release contains quite a bit of material from 21 December, starting with an email from a person whose entire email address is blacked out to four people with parliament.govt.nz email addresses (almost certainly people in one or more ministerial office, including that of the Minister for Pacific Peoples), but including Christina Connolly, the private secretary in the office of the Minister for the Public Service. Here is the relevant page from the release (there is a whole other paragraph withheld from that final email). Connolly sends it on to one of the PSC Deputy Commissioners, one responsible for communications and public affairs.
Mr Sio, then Minister for Pacific Peoples, is on record – his ministerial diary – as having attended and spoken at this lavish farewell, but it is apparently only two months later, confronted with the actual numbers (of the expenditure), that his staff appear to think there might perhaps be a bit of an issue. And there is no sign at this point that the PSC secondee in the Minister for the Public Service’s office is even aware there is an issue. It wasn’t perhaps an ideal day for some of this to come to light, as it was the day PSC had announced the appointment of a new head of MPP.
Anyway, whatever PSC knew by then, they first seemed to think that some public statement might be in order. Because there are several emails about a proposed “Statement from Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes” in which it was intended to indicate that the spending had come to his attention and “I have decided to look into this matter to understand the extent to which that guidance was adhered to”. This work was to be completed by February 2023 (ie in fairly short order, given that this was being discussed on 21 December). For whatever reason, that statement was never issued and the wider public wasn’t aware there even was an issue until the final report finally came out in August,
The next document is from 7 June: an email from the PSC Deputy Commissioner to the secondee in the Minister’s office, advising that PSC is envisaging releasing their final report the following week (and providing a bullet point summary of what was known to them then).
We don’t know why this investigation took months longer than PSC had initially envisaged. But we’ve known for a while that up to this point (early June) PSC knew nothing at all about the inappropriate spending (by MPP) on Leauanae’s family members’ travel to his welcome ceremony at MCH. Something of that must have come to light in the days after 7 June, and the enquiry is then reopened and is only finally published in August (Leauanae – who simply has to have known all along that this was inappropriate spending for personal benefit – having very belatedly paid that money back by then). There is no way it would not have come to light earlier if either MPP or Leauanae himself had been at all proactive, and inclined to bend over backwards to think about anything that might have been raising questions re these events in October last year.
The final document in the bundle is an email from 4 August, shortly before the report is finally released, to the secondee in the office of the Minister for the Public Service asking her to pass the final material along to the offices of Edmonds (now Minister for Pacific Peoples) and Sepuloni (primarily responsible for MCH). But just as one ministerial services staffer to others. Nothing at all from the Commissioner to these ministers.
No one emerges well from this affair:
Not the Public Service Commission (or Commissioner) as regards the original matter and investigation itself. How did a department they oversee come to exemplify such a culture of excess in the first place? How did the (bloated) Commission have no idea of the lavish farewell and gifts for two months after the event, apparently reliant entirely on a member of the public’s OIA which – after it had gone out – finally ended up on their desks. Why did the initial inquiry take six months, not the two initially envisaged, and why did they not ask sufficient questions that would have led them to the MCH-welcome travel expenditure until they had almost all wrapped up and were ready to publish. How did the Commissioner in his press release go beyond the facts and actively mislead the public about Mr Leauanae’s part in all this, particularly the speed (or otherwise, more to the point) with which the money was repaid?
Not the Ministry for Pacific Peoples which arranged the lavish event in the first place, in clear breach of public sector standards (the written ones, but who knows if they were the lived ones), and then must have been not overly cooperative and proactive in the PSC inquiry, or otherwise it would not have taken until June before PSC finally became aware of the spending on Leauanae’s family travel. Shouldn’t PSC have asked early on, and MPP proferred it early on even if PSC didn’t ask, about all expenditure on or for Mr Leauanae and/or his family in (say) the preceding six months. You cast the net wide to be sure of capturing everything relevant. Unless you don’t care greatly, want to protect your former boss, and just want to do the bare minimum.
Not the several relevant ministers of the Crown. As noted already, Mr Sio, the Minister for Pacific Peoples, had attended and spoken at the farewell. There is no evidence he raised concerns with either MPP or PSC. What sense of public expenditure restraint and appropriate spending on a public servant changing jobs did he have? Any at all? And there is no sign, at any point early or late, of any serious expressions of concern from Hipkins (then Minister for the Public Service) or Edmonds or Sepuloni, or Andrew Little (currently Minister for the Public Service).
Not Mr Leauanae, whose lists of faults and failings, revealing someone simply unfit to be a government department CEO, is long. In earlier posts, I’d noted that he could and should have ensured reimbursements to MPP within days of the event taking place, and should have immediately recognised how inappropriate his receipt of those benefits was. There is no evidence that he ever had that moment of recognition. A point that hadn’t occurred to me until I wrote my post on Saturday was that a slack but honourable CE (one whose subordinates – appointed by him- had badly stuffed up with this lavish and inappropriate expenditure) would have been on the phone to Peter Hughes the very next day, deeply embarrassed and apologetic, suggesting that an PSC investigation was probably warranted, pledging cooperation, and indicating that he had already taken steps to return the money and benefit he himself had inappropriately received. He did nothing of the sort, and the case against him is only strengthened by his failure even in March, when he returned the gifts and money he’d received at the farewell, to have drawn PSC’s attention to the spending on his family travel, or to have taken immediate steps even then (very belatedly) to have returned that money promptly. That he is still a government CE is a disgraceful reflection on the management of the public sector by Hughes and by the various relevant ministers.
And then finally, not the Public Service Commission (and the Commissioner) who have simply not been straight with the public even when their initial defence of their protege has been revealed to be threadbare. The lack of straightforward integrity is staggering.
