Editorial: Rennie report whitewashes responsibility

The Corrections Minister's instructions to the State Services Commissioner, Iain Rennie, were quite explicit. He was to "establish who is accountable for serious failings identified by the Auditor-General's report into the management of offenders on parole". By any yardstick, Mr Rennie has failed miserably. He has found no one accountable in terms worthy of justifying dismissal. That includes the chief executive of the Corrections Department, Barry Matthews, and the parole head, Katrina Casey. And there is not a murmur about who else, among the problem-plagued department's staff, should be held accountable for these "serious failings". The Government's quest for public-sector accountability seems to have passed Mr Rennie by.

His report is the more abject in that he confirms the department has been failing to make the grade. Corrections' internal standard is 85 per cent compliance with its own parole management procedures. Last December, it managed 80 per cent. Further, Mr Rennie judged that the department could have moved earlier last year to manage the potential risk to public safety caused by far more offenders being placed on community-based sentences.

But he excuses these grave shortcomings by pointing to improvements in performance. Compliance with parole management procedures had dipped as low as 60 per cent in November, 2007, he notes. What he does not mention is that this was almost three years after Mr Matthews took the Corrections reins. It was also about the time community-based sentences came into force, a move that necessitated the training of new probation officers. This innovation may, as Mr Rennie suggests, be a mitigating factor. But it is not an excuse. It should not distract from the long-term problems under Mr Matthews' watch.

Graeme Burton's murderous rampage while on parole in January 2007 was simply the most glaring example. The improvements since are to a level that remains unsatisfactory. Thus, they can hardly warrant Mr Rennie's conclusion that Mr Matthews' dismissal is not justified. Indeed, his entire report seems barely to occupy the same realm as that of the Auditor-General's, which found that even after Karl Kuchenbecker's death, at the hands of Burton, Corrections was still not following its own requirements in most of the 100 parole cases his staff examined.

The commissioner does not only fudge the issues of accountability. He is equally inept when reporting on the second part of his assignment: what should be done to restore public confidence in Corrections? He suggests the public had simply not picked up on the fact that the department has learned lessons after the deaths of Mr Kuchenbecker, Debbie Ashton - also the victim of a parolee - and Liam Ashley, who was murdered in the back of a prison van. That is not surprising, given the horrific nature of those crimes. People, quite reasonably, are struggling to look past a department failing in its duty to protect public safety.

Most logically, the restoration of public confidence would start with the exit of Mr Matthews. Only the identification and dismissal of lower-level staff, who were guilty for the most grievous breaches of parole monitoring, would have rendered that unnecessary. Mr Rennie's report might have propelled matters to that conclusion. It has not. It throws the spotlight back on Mr Matthews' tense relationship with Corrections Minister Judith Collins.

He was placed in an untenable position by the damning report of the Auditor-General, and should have resigned then. Mr Rennie's whitewash makes him no less culpable. It merely creates employment contract issues. Someone must take responsibility for the department's blunders.