Kerre Woodham: There must be a way to keep public servants accountable

I talked about accountability this time last month, specifically about MBIE boss Nick Blakely. You'll remember that the Privileges Committee found Blakely and former Immigration New Zealand head Alison McDonald deliberately misled —what you and I know as lying— Parliament. The Privileges Committee said their conduct was an insult to the public service, and yet who's the current head of MBIE? Nick Blakely. Doesn't seem to have bothered him. Sure Alison McDonald's gone on to a nice board somewhere. She won't be locked up at home, covered in sackcloth and ashes, rueing and repenting. 

Now we have the Greater Wellington Regional Council filing charges against the Wellington City Council and Wellington Water for the catastrophic failure of the Moa Point wastewater plant, with the Wellington City Council and Wellington Water facing $100 million fines if the prosecutions are successful. And in the same week, we have the CEO of Tauranga City Council, Marty Grenfell, resigning after the deadly landslide at Mount Maunganui. A report found that the council had been warned repeatedly over many years that there was a risk of landslides to those staying at the Mount Maunganui Holiday Park at the base of the mount, and yet the reports were shelved, never read, didn't go to the right people, whatever. 

Right up until a matter of months ago, there were reports warning of the dangers. Systemic failure at the council, and the guy in charge, Marty Grenfell, initially says he's staying, he's not resigning. Hell no. No, the buck does not stop with the top guy. No, he's staying because it wasn't his fault and he's the best person to fix the systemic failures at the council. Then all of a sudden, after a closed door meeting earlier this week, he's resigned and his last day's today. 

Now you cannot tell me that that man had an epiphany and a sudden attack of moral conscience. "Oh no, hang on a minute, the reason I get the big bucks is because the buck does stop with me. I was in charge when the latest reports came out warning of the failures. Maybe I should resign." No. He would have been persuaded to go and part of that persuasion would have been a golden handshake. Now I don't know if that's true, nobody's talking. Feel free to ring up and prove me wrong and say, "No, Kerre, incorrect. He did not get a golden handshake and a payout." But I reckon he would. 

You and I know, this is the thing about getting old, you're supposed to know stuff, but the older I get, the more confused I seem to be becoming. Because you and I know that when we stuff up, if our careless actions or our lack of due diligence, even just a moment's inattention, results in death or damage or environmental disaster, by crikey we're held accountable. Our names become public, we're dragged through the courts, we're financially ruined, in the worst cases we go to jail. 

But these guys, they keep their jobs, Nick Blakely, or they're paid a fortune to leave, I strongly suspect Marty Grenfell. And if we want to see any organisation taken to court, as you would, say, a big private company that was spilling waste into the river or the sea, then they would be prosecuted. The taxpayer would prosecute them and they, as the private company, would have to pay monumental fines. But in this case, if we want to see people who've made the most appalling errors that have resulted in a loss of life degradation of the environment on a massive scale, we have to not only fix the damage they've caused as ratepayers and taxpayers where we can, we then have to pay to prosecute them through the courts and if we're successful, we end up paying the fine. 

How does that work? There has got to be a system somewhere on this silly spinning rock that we call planet Earth, there has got to be somewhere where there is a structure by which public servants can be held personally liable. If you can have the CEO of the Ports of Auckland held personally responsible for the deaths of those on his watch, can we not have individuals who get paid the big money because they are responsible for these big organisations? Can they not be held personally responsible too? That only seems fair. How is it that as ratepayers, taxpayers, private individuals, we're held accountable, we've got our heels held to the fire, these guys either stay in their job, Nick Blakely, walk away with wads of cash, pick a CEO any CEO after systemic failure of the organisations they've run, or you've got something like Moa Point and we pay and we pay and we pay and they never do.