Nickie Muir: Our own Mexcian soap opera

Northern Advocate columnist Nicky Muir. Photo/John Stone.

Skeletons in closets. Bringing councils down with threats of exposure of illegitimate spending. All we need is a few bodices to be ripped and a couple of good-looking evil twins bent on destructive love alliances and we'd have our own Mexican soap opera right here in the 'Rei.

The affidavit alleging some of the above by the PR man for the CEO Ford Watson is interesting but, until verified, just vexatious.

Today, the ratepayers of Kaipara should receive the Auditor General's report on how they got to their ruinous financial situation.

To understand why we should remain interested or even conscious through this or even how it relates to the council in Whangarei, you'd have to ask a Kaipara resident if they wished they'd been paying attention when the first whistles got blown there nearly four years ago.

Before they had to resort to a rates strike to force a higher authority to take an interest.

Drill to the core of the issue and it's unauthorised and, therefore, illegitimate spending by council on developer-friendly projects that's the rub.

When the pressure came on developers to pay through increased contributions, the community picked up the tab after decisions made in meetings from which they had been publicly excluded.

The second reading of the Kaipara District Council Bill passed ahead of the Auditor General's report is good reading. As unpalatable as this legislation may be, local MP David Clendon pointed out that the genteel language "actually understates the scale of the sheer incompetence, the illegal activity that was occurring over a number of years, and it is very unfortunate".

He's right. The Greens' reluctant consent to this unfortunate yet pragmatic legislation still underlines that there is no get-out-of-jail-free card for the former council, which would set a dangerous precedent should irregularities be found by the auditor's report. Unfortunate too for WDC not to take note.

Here, where it has been alleged that the elected representatives are just the new show ponies and the senior management employees remain the jockeys - it calls for some form of independent financial audit to better assess their and, indeed, the previous auditors' performance.

If the skeletons are knocking - open the door so we can have a financial coroner's report.

A forensic audit of the council books going back several mayors would do this and, like a coroner's final analysis, would allow a decent burial of the old councils' way of doing business behind closed doors, potentially saving millions by making sure that process is adhered to.

It might clear the decks for the new council to get on with core business without the taint of mistakes past and also send a message to Wellington that we're putting our own house in order, pre-empting the need for a reformed structure, which is unlikely to serve local democracy well.