Bruce Bisset: Butler request just sour grapes

Bruce Bisset, Hawke's Bay Today columnist. Photo / Warren Buckland

Regardless of which way the Ombudsman's Office rules on the matter of regional councillor Tom Belford's emails, because the investigation is a step too far - in my view those mails are private. And I would hope the Ombudsman recognises them as such.

Ex-CHB Mayor Peter Butler can rail all he likes about transparency and accountability, but his council was known for anything but. Lack of public consultation, closed meetings at the drop of a gavel, and dare I say it suggestions of pre-determination marked the last two terms (if not more) of CHB District Council.

And it speaks volumes for Mr Belford's integrity that neither he nor (as far as I'm aware) his supporters have got into a "tit-for-tat" series of LGOIA requests, even if such might bring something anomalous or even scandalous to light.

That they haven't holds to the same reason: private correspondence between councillors and their ratepayers, or even amongst councillors out of meeting time, should not be interpreted as "official information" under the Act.

Why? Because anyone in any job trying to digest information before them needs to be able to hold full and frank discussions with their fellows, and with both supporters and antagonists, without fear that any "borderline" comments will be later held against them.

That's how good decision-making happens: by to-ing and fro-ing the contentions and arguing them out in private, so that when, in a public meeting, a decision must be made, a councillor's mind is clear on the issues and how they perceive them.

That's not pre-determination; that's common sense.

It makes even more sense on a subject as large and complex as the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme, not least because it contains many humps and roadblocks and maybes that are, by their nature, confidential; how else to fully air and debate them?
Those who say such business should be left entirely to when councillors are at the council table fail to grasp how weighty and time-consuming the average agenda is. A hundred pages is a short one!

Nor how the rules of debate at such meetings discourage frank and full discussion - because in general each speaker only has one opportunity to put their case, and none to properly debate it.

So without prior private discussion of items the meeting rules would need to be relaxed and an ordinary meeting would otherwise take days, not hours, to complete. Is that really effective use of councillor and staff time? No.

The PC brigade - which Mr Butler may be chagrined to realise he's now a part of - seems to increasingly take the view that anything an elected official says or does is "public information". A moment's thought proves that's nonsense; else next folk will want to know what song they were singing in the shower!

Politicians live in the public eye most of the time. But they are just as entitled to their privacy, in their own time, as anyone else.

If that happens to include discussions on any issue with a third party - be it a staff member, a member of the public, or a fellow politician - that's both their prerogative and a personal part of their job. Personal, note.

Thanks primarily to technology, the "public eye" has been widened to the point almost everything someone says or does can - if they are networking most of each day - be accessed. That does not mean that it should be.

If there were some hint of criminal conduct, then fine, access it. But there isn't.
The whole beat-up is simply sour grapes on the part of the "build it and be damned brigade" Peter Butler subscribes to - because there was an election, and they lost.