KEY POINTS:
I am feeling absolutely positively slutted off about Wellington, and jammy public servants in particular. Have you noticed how Wellington has its own wacky micro-climate, culturally speaking?
While the latest housing and retail data shows that here in Auckland and the north of the North Island we are
suffering a financial downturn, Wellington is relatively buoyant, economists say.
That might be because unlike meat workers and mussel shellers, public servants aren't in danger of losing their jobs - unless they have lied on their CVs. So they can keep on buying their organic veges and drinking their chai lattes on Lambton Quay. It is all very chummy.
It is not surprising that some of the best political scoops in this country come not from the press gallery, but from journalists who are far enough away to be able to endure excommunication from the Kelburn cocktail circuit.
Ian Wishart's famous "frontbum" interview with John Tamihere springs to mind, or more recently, Auckland-based Haydn Jones from TVNZ who brought down the head of the Immigration Service. He did it by tenaciously pursuing the release of a report into alleged corruption written by former Justice Secretary David Oughton. I don't know Haydn Jones, but I can't imagine he was a regular at Labour pot-luck dinners before his Mary Anne Thompson scoop; he made his name with a raunchy 20/20 interview with Nicky Watson where she admitted her bosoms were fake.
I suspect the principle of distance bringing clarity applies not merely to journalists but to anyone who is meant to hold our public sector to account.
If you want some fresh perspective on alleged dodginess in a government department, it might be better to get a grumpy Jafa to do the honours rather than someone who, in the case of Oughton, has spent 41 years breathing the rarefied air of the public service.
I have just read Oughton's report into the Immigration Service and it is a particularly Yes Minister-ish document. Putting aside his alarming yoof-style spelling ("not gone thru"), Oughton appears to have done only a fraction of the digging in compiling the report that Jones did in unearthing the thing. We don't know what the terms of reference are - the Government has refused to release them - so it is possible Oughton was "Noel Ingram-ed" (The QC who cleared MP Phillip Field of corruption after a narrowly focused probe). Either way, Oughton accepted at face value the assurances of senior Immigration officials that Thompson did not ask for special treatment for her family. That is not good enough.
The Oughton report adds to a growing realisation that one cannot trust internal inquiries anymore. Kiwiblog's David Farrar has suggested setting up a replacement for the Serious Fraud Office which can also investigate the Government. It is not a silly idea, although it would be expensive. The SFO is meant to become part of the cop shop, and after the police's handling of previous politically sensitive investigations - Paintergate, Don Brash's missing emails, Louise Nicholas' rape claims - I don't know that this would be an improvement. And do we really need yet another government department to keep government departments honest?
It might be worth doing if there was one stipulation: it should definitely not be based within 500km of the Beehive.
deborah@coneandco.com
