“He leers and winks at me and constantly stares at my breasts,” said one confidential complaint alleging sexual harassment against a city councillor in the 1990s.
“I don’t have problems with women, domestically or otherwise ... in our house I have the last word, and it’s ‘yes dear’,” read an email from a councillor in 1997 after an allegation he was abusive to staff.
“My wife and I do not and never have accessed pornographic material,” another councillor told the mayor in 1999.
The Herald has reviewed more than a decade of the Wellington City Council’s dirty laundry that was mistakenly passed to a member of the public.
The 2000-odd pages of material contain some of the most sensitive council information to pass through the mayor’s office between the late 1980s and early 2000s, seemingly intentionally filed away in locked drawers for safekeeping.
The files emerged after Breaker Bay builder Raymond Morgan purchased an old mayoral desk from the Wellington Southern Landfill Tip Shop for $200 after it was cleared from the old Town Hall.
After being tracked down by the Herald, Morgan handed over the documents to our newsroom, claiming the only way to get the council to act was through the media, after its apparent reluctance when it was first brought to their attention.
Our reporting has now led to the Wellington City Council’s chief executive launching an official investigation.
The council has apologised to those whose confidential information has been leaked, and has publicly notified of a privacy breach.
It has also had to call in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which said the fallout from the breach could spell “serious harm” to those involved.
One of the most significant revelations in the collection is the original copy of an anonymous letter written by a council whistle-blower detailing allegations of sexual harassment against a city councillor.
It is unclear from the files whether the allegation was ever seriously investigated or believed.
The serious claim came in an envelope printed with “personal and confidential” and was addressed to the mayor at the time.
“I am a woman member of staff. [A councillor] has persistently made sleazy sexual advances to me. He brushes up against me when he meets me on my own in corridors or the lifts. He leers and winks at me and constantly stares at my breasts. I find him physically intimidating in the way in which he comes up in suggestive comments. He frightens and disgusts me.
“I know that [the councillor] sexually harassed another woman ... and she did complain but she did not want to take the matter any further. I am scared of the embarrassment that it would cause if I make a formal complaint but I am sure that I am not the only woman he is sleazy to. I’ve had enough. I just want him to stop. Can you help me.”
The only other document that references the claim is a memorandum written by the council’s capability development director and an HR consultant, written to the chief executive at the time.
“It is impossible to determine whether or not sexual harassment has actually occurred in the absence of the complaint being identified. It is possible that the whole letter is a falsification,” it reads.
“Nonetheless a response is called for which will reassure any real complainant that her allegation has been heard and action taken.
“None of these allegations is predicated on an assumption of impropriety on the part of [the councillor] but are simply proper procedures.”
It recommended the accused councillor be interviewed by the CEO “to ask [the councillor] if there is any truth to the allegations”.
It also discussed sending out an email to staff about the council’s sexual harassment policy, and holding individual meetings with women working in the mayor’s office and the democratic services office to discuss the council’s commitments to a harassment-free working environment and offer the opportunity for any of them to meet with senior staff.
Other correspondence details abuse and harassment claims against a councillor by senior leadership.
A formal complaint was laid by a senior leader, supported by a letter from the then-CEO, claiming both had been subjected to abusive and harassing behaviour from a councillor.
The complaint has its own file from the mayoral desk, made up of email correspondence between those involved and how it was handled by the top ranks of council.
In an email from another councillor, it was suggested the allegedly abusive councillor had an issue with women in management roles.
They responded, “I don’t have problems with women, domestically or otherwise ... other than all the usual! And certainly not with the position they hold in public life or commerce. In our house I have the last word, and it’s ‘yes dear’!!“
The other councillor himself had been earlier accused of being abusive to council staff, a letter from the city secretary in the 1980s reveals.
Other emails appear to be filed randomly and without explanation, like an email from a male councillor where he passes on a news article.
“Occasionally a genuinely excellent article comes out. Thought some of you might have missed this. This wonderful example from a special human being says everything some if us have been wanted [sic] to say for sooo long!” it reads.
The newspaper article, photocopied and printed in the file, is headlined “Women’s only role is to breed – historian”, and discusses claims by historian David Irving such as “women do produce useful things, they produce men”.
The email was sent to three senior female council officials, including the then-CEO, as well as all councillors.
There are hundreds of pages discussing in detail the performance reviews of former council chief executives and other senior council leaders.
Many of the CEO performance review documents include ratings on their effectiveness by councillors, and discussion of whether to increase pay and issue bonuses. Thousands of dollars in bonuses were paid to previous CEOs, the documents reveal.
The then-CEO also reviewed the performance of their team, “I believe [senior leader] has significantly improved her relationships with councillors and overcome the stresses and tension which were obvious at the end of last year”, the CEO wrote in the late 1990s.
There are letters from HR consultants brought in to investigate claims of poor performance of one senior manager after the council subcommittee raised issues and suggesting that person was responsible for high staff turnover in their department.
“Urgent urgent urgent!!!!!!!” reads a frantic email from a member of the council senior leadership team sent on a November afternoon in 1996.
The issue discussed was the pros and cons of “forcing the resignation” of a director from a council-linked board, after a troubling report.
Separate email correspondence between then-mayor Dame Kerry Prendergast and a councillor details an in-depth back and forth over a code of conduct investigation concerning that councillor leaking information from a public excluded meeting.
Prendergast last week said the privacy breach is a “diabolical situation on a number of fronts”.
Prendergast, who was mayor between 2001 and 2010, told Herald NOW’s Michael Morrah she could not believe the desk was not emptied in 2013 and that the council did not appear to have believed the man who found the documents.
A manila folder contains 35 pages of confidential documents about a redundancy payout dispute and subsequent personal grievance claim from a staffer of a former mayor.
“I understand [council staffer] has already offered settlement in the order of $20,000 and that the union is seeking more. As you know, my position was, and still [is], that I refuse to make any offer whatsoever,” the mayor wrote.
“Please ask the city solicitor to advise me on a counter legal action against [the staffer] for lying, abuse of trust, and manipulation of the facts.”
The-then mayor said that if a settlement payment was offered, they would personally take legal action against the staffer to reclaim the funds themselves. “Somebody has to take a stand on this sort of stupidity. Why shouldn’t it be me?”
The settlement dispute resulted in a personal grievance claim.
Job applications for various roles in the council are among the files, which discuss candidates’ personal information such as health, marital status, and salary.
Documents also show how the council rated these candidates, including discussions about references, and include commentary on their character flaws.
One man’s reference for a job in the mayor’s office in the early 1990s stated he was a “good researcher with a good brain” but “caught up a bit with the isms” and “conscious of trends within different groups especially women and sometimes ‘extrovertly’ sensitive to these groups”.
Another of his references states the man “can be quite arrogant with co-workers especially women which she puts down to his background”.
A search on careers platform LinkedIn shows that man was hired for the role.
Highly confidential reports and minutes from public-excluded meetings of the council’s performance review subcommittee discuss shortlists of potential candidates for the role of CEO at the council.
Included in the files are copies of the non-disclosure agreements councillors were made to sign when taking part in these discussions.
In 1999, a councillor was wrongly accused of watching porn on his council laptop, documents from the desk files show.
The councillor’s log of internet use picked up pornographic keywords, which resulted in an alert to the mayor at the time.
In a letter to the mayor, the councillor explained the situation; he and his wife were out of the country and a young family member was house-sitting.
“My wife and I do not and never have accessed pornographic material on the W.C.C computer or on any other computer for that matter,” he wrote.
“The thought, suggestion, inference (call it what you may) that [my wife] or I do has been extremely disturbing to us both.”
He supplied his travel itinerary to prove he was in the United States, and the relative responsible for accessing porn on the council kit was forced to write a signed letter admitting to the “gross error of judgment”.
The councillor’s apology was “unreservably accepted” [sic] by the mayor.
Ethan Manera is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.