Is this what we've come to?

What sort of country have we become?

The New Zealand Herald broke the news this week that former cabinet minister Kris Faafoi, who resigned only 12 weeks ago, has set himself up as a lobbyist. It’s already an overcrowded field, but he should have a distinct advantage over all the other political hustlers who infest Wellington because of his inside knowledge and contacts. “We know how the government works at the highest level,” his company’s website boasts. Translation: Faafoi’s mates in the cabinet and his former underlings in the bureaucracy are only a phone call away.

The pseudonymous Thomas Cranmer – the same blogger who blew open the Nanaia Mahuta nepotism scandal – points out that Faafoi’s new gig wouldn’t be allowed in most comparable democracies. Australia, Britain and Canada all impose stand-down periods before former ministers and other public figures can profit as lobbyists from their connections and inside knowledge. In Canada it’s five years.

But here? Go for your life, mate. Fill your boots. We’re cool with it. No worries.

And it gets worse. Cranmer reveals that Faafoi will be working for Dialogue 22, a company set up by an Auckland ad man named Greg Partington. Dialogue 22 will presumably come under the umbrella of Partington’s Waitapu Group, which also includes the “cultural consultancy” Tatou. And Tatou’s CEO is Skye Kimura, who just happens to be the wife of Faafoi’s former cabinet colleague Peeni Henare, the Minister of Defence.

It all starts to look uncomfortably cosy. In fact cosyism is the word used by leftist commentator Max Rashbrooke, in a courageous column last week, to describe what he called a chronic problem in New Zealand public life. Rashbrooke wrote: “We are largely spared, thankfully, the envelopes-stuffed with-cash-corruption that infects other countries. [Editor’s note: Not necessarily, but we’ll come to that shortly.] But we’re suffused with overly close relationships: nepotism, jobs for the boys, all that jazz.”

He described cosyism as “those insidious processes by which public positions, jobs and contracts sometimes go not to the best-qualified applicants but to the friends, contacts and family members of people in power”. A cosy society, he went on, “tolerates the most colossal conflicts of interest”.

Rashbrooke cited several examples, but it seemed that what finally prodded him to sound the alarm was the Mahuta-Gannin Ormsby affair – a seething morass of nepotism and conflicting interests that Mahuta herself seemed to think was magically rendered acceptable because she met technical disclosure requirements so wide open you could paddle a double-hulled waka through them.

When even Labour’s friends start spitting the dummy – and I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that Rashbrooke’s natural inclination would be to support a social-democratic party such as Labour – then you know Jacinda Ardern has a serious integrity issue on her hands, even if she won’t admit it.

Cosyism is an appropriate word to describe relationships between people in power which, while not necessarily breaking any rules, nonetheless cause unease about the possibility of improper influence being brought to bear behind the scenes. Another example was back in the public spotlight recently when Justice Minister Kiri Allan and RNZ presenter Mani Dunlop proudly announced their engagement.

When I wrote about their relationship in June, I said many people would feel uncomfortable that a senior government politician was in an intimate relationship with RNZ’s director of Maori news, but I could put it no more strongly than that. I’ve had a rethink since then and come to a more emphatic position. I think it’s plain wrong that the partner of a minister holds a key editorial position – and a politically sensitive one at that – in a major state-owned news organisation. The only honourable remedy, though I don’t expect it to happen, would be for Dunlop to stand down and take another job within RNZ where there could be no suspicion of improper influence being exercised on news and current affairs.

Nepotism and cosyism, however, are not the only threats to the integrity of public life in New Zealand, nor are they necessarily the most worrying ones. We were reminded of another this week by the guilty verdicts in the trial of three Chinese businessmen charged with fraud in relation to political donations.

For me, by far the most significant revelation from the trial was the degree to which some New Zealand party officials seemed prepared to ingratiate themselves with potential foreign donors whose generosity, we can safely assume, wasn’t motivated by an altruistic desire to enhance New Zealand democracy.

Simon Bridges and the disgraced Jami-Lee Ross were both implicated in this scandal. Bridges was not charged with any offence and Ross was found not guilty, but both were tainted by their apparent eagerness to court potential foreign donors about whom they apparently knew little.

The groveller-in-chief, however, appears to have been former National Party president Peter Goodfellow, whose hunger for donations was such that he wrote a glowing testimonial for one of the defendants, Yikun Zhang, whom Tim Murphy of Newsroom has identified as a key figure in organisations that serve as a front for the Chinese Communist Party.

In a reference written on National Party note paper, Goodfellow wrote: “It gives me great pleasure to support the nomination of Yikun Zhang for a New Zealand royal honour, in respect of business, philanthropy, community services and NZ-China relations.”

Goodfellow went on: “Throughout the time I have known him, Yikun has been one of the most highly regarded members of the Chinese community in New Zealand, or in China. Yikun is well known for his genuineness, aptitude and generosity.”

The extravagant endorsement appears to have worked. Zhang was subsequently made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours. Now he’s a convicted criminal facing a possible prison term of seven years.

Was it pure gullibility, desperation for funds or a combination of the two that persuaded Goodfellow – who was reportedly admired by some within National for his fund-raising ability, though no other talent was publicly evident – to compromise his party by seeking Zhang’s patronage?

Whatever the explanation, the donations scandal - even though it was exposed - is a hugely damaging blow to New Zealand’s reputation as a country immune from the curses of bribery and corruption. The apparent readiness of New Zealand political parties - Labour as well as National - to snuggle up (almost literally) to donors of dubious repute was a signal that we’re available to the highest bidders, no questions asked (other than a polite request to break the money down into small amounts so they don't have to be disclosed).

Is this what we’ve come to?

Footnote: As an afterthought, I've inserted a link to the Waitapu Group. Readers can form their own conclusions about what sort of organisation it is.

 

 

Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again

It was WRONG of NZ Cricket to invite Ashley Bloomfield to be their guest at a T20 match and then lobby him about getting the Black Caps vaccinated against Covid-19 so they could go overseas, but perhaps that’s the type of crass, unsubtle behaviour we should expect from sporting administrators. After all, they tend to have just one object in mind, which is the promotion of their sport. No worries for them about perceptions of conflict of interest or important principles such as transparency and the improper exercise of influence over public officials.  Of the three parties in this affair, NZ Cricket is the least culpable. But at least the controversy has cast a brief glimmer of light on the schmoozing industry, where corporates and sporting organisations play on the vanity of politicians and senior public servants – not to mention their fondness for sport – by inviting them to glamour events and plying them with free drinks, food and an opportunity to mingle with the players. This is the soft, vulnerable underbelly of a political system that prides itself on being corruption-free.

It goes without saying that it was also WRONG for Bloomfield to accept the invitation, especially when he should have foreseen that he might be subjected to pressure, however gentle it may have been, regarding vaccinations. Hasn’t he heard the old adage that there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Outfits like NZC are unlikely to invite the director-general of health to a match out of pure goodwill; they generally do it in the hope of securing some benefit. Bloomfield now appears to accept that he erred, and has apologised.  But the fact that he accepted the invitation can’t be reversed, and we are left with the perception that he’s either extremely naïve or wasn’t too concerned about the ethical propriety of accepting a freebie. Either way, it’s a worry – the more so when we add this to the sainted Bloomfield’s proven tendency to make reassuring public statements about Covid-19 that are subsequently contradicted by health workers on the front line. I suspect most New Zealanders like Bloomfield and want to feel they can trust him, but public confidence in him has taken another hit.

It was woefully, inexcusably WRONG for Bloomfield to defend himself by saying he attended the match “in a private capacity” (which he now appears to have retracted). What did he take us for? He’s a very senior and high-profile public servant in a position of almost unprecedented influence. He may go shopping at the local supermarket in a private capacity; he may go to the movies with his wife, paying for their own tickets, in a private capacity; but he certainly can’t attend a major public sporting event, at the expense of an organisation that’s hoping for a favourable decision from him, and then disingenuously claim it was “private”.  Did he really believe, as he claims, that he was acting within the rules?  Did no alarm bells ring? Or if they did, was he was so excited about the prospect of meeting his cricketing heroes that he clamped his hands over his ears? Whichever way you look at it, his judgment has to be regarded as gravely suspect.

Finally, it was more than just WRONG for Jacinda Ardern to say that she didn’t think anyone in New Zealand would want to deny Bloomfield the opportunity to watch some cricket. This was so patently and grossly disingenuous as to insult every New Zealander’s intelligence. No one has suggested Bloomfield shouldn’t watch a cricket match. All we ask is that he pay for his own tickets, which he can well afford to do on his very generous taxpayer-funded salary. Did Ardern really expect to spin that line and get away with it? We can only conclude that her judgment isn’t too sharp either.

Let's see what the opinion polls say

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, May 7.)

It is possible to be intelligent and a buffoon. Maurice Williamson is such a man.

He can’t be a complete thicko, because despite what people think about politicians, it’s hard to remain an MP for 27 years – and hold down several ministerial posts – without a modicum of intellect.

Besides, Williamson has a degree in computer science and applied mathematics. 

But there is intelligence and there is intelligence. There is the type of intelligence that enables people to get degrees in subjects that, to lesser beings like me, sound impossibly pointy-headed.

Then there is the type of intelligence that enables people to make sound judgments. It’s the type of intelligence that stops you from making a dick of yourself. It’s the little voice in your head that says, “Whoa! Don’t go there”.

There doesn’t seem to be any such voice in Williamson’s head. That makes him accident-prone – the type of politician who makes party leaders and whips feel nervous.

From time to time throughout his career, his propensity for saying things that were probably better left unsaid has got him into bother.

In 2003 he broke ranks by criticising the performance of the then National Party leader, Bill English. He may have been saying what other National MPs were thinking, but others held their tongues while Williamson sounded off. Predictably, he found himself isolated and was suspended from the party caucus.

In 2010 he made a lame, if harmless, after-dinner joke that offended Muslims. A more prudent politician, knowing how touchy religious minorities can be, would have resisted the temptation to play for a cheap laugh – especially when he represents a multicultural electorate such as Pakuranga, whose population is nearly 30 per cent Asian.

But that’s the sort of man Williamson is. He’s the class clown. He gives the impression that he just can’t help himself.

And sometimes, it must be said, this works to his advantage – never more so than when he gave his famous speech in Parliament ridiculing opponents of same-sex marriage.

That made him an unlikely international hero overnight, but to me it just confirmed that he can’t suppress the urge to show off. 

There was a less endearing side to that speech. Many of Williamson’s own constituents and party supporters would have opposed the same-sex marriage bill, for sincere and deeply felt reasons. But to Williamson, they were fair game for derision and mockery.

To me, that speech exposed him not only as someone who loves to be the centre of attention, but as a bigot in reverse – a man contemptuous of anyone who didn’t share his progressive views, and happy to have fun at their expense.

Given this background, it was no great surprise that Williamson had to resign his ministerial portfolios last week after he caused deep embarrassment to his party.

This was more than just another case of him shooting his mouth off. This time there was a serious moral dimension to his lack of judgment.

It’s hard to believe he could see nothing wrong in phoning a senior police officer about domestic violence charges faced by the wealthy businessman Donghua Liu, on whose behalf he had previously lobbied for citizenship.  

A drover’s dog could see that it screamed impropriety. Either Williamson’s political blind spot is even bigger than we imagined – so big, in fact, as to block out his vision entirely – or there was something more disturbing going on.

In an interview with TV3’s John Campbell, Williamson tried to distance himself from Liu but failed wretchedly. It turned out that Liu, on Williamson’s suggestion, had bought the house next door to his own holiday home at Pauanui, on the Coromandel Peninsula – and that Williamson had done work on the house for him and even used it himself.

Added to the revelation that Liu’s citizenship ceremony took place in Williamson’s electorate office, this made nonsense of his protestations that they weren’t really friends.

And the most damning aspect of all, of course, is that a company associated with Liu made a $22,000 donation to the National Party. 

Now, think about this. In the latest annual global corruption survey conducted by Transparency International, New Zealand and Denmark were rated the world’s most corruption-free countries.

That’s a status we should be proud of, and determined to protect. It sharply distinguishes us from Australia, where corruption is rampant. But I wonder how much longer we will be able to make that claim.

No one has alleged Williamson is corrupt, but appearances matter. It smells – there’s no other word for it – when a cabinet minister lobbies on behalf of a wealthy immigrant businessman and a generous donation subsequently turns up in party coffers.

The odour intensifies when the minister phones the police about their investigations into criminal charges against the businessman, pointing out to them that he’s an important investor in New Zealand.

This comes on top of the John Banks/Kim Dotcom scandal and the suspicions swirling around Justice Minister Judith Collins and her association with the Chinese company Oravida. Those controversies, too, involve wealthy business interests and generous donations.

I don’t accept that Collins has crossed the line in the way Williamson did, although there’s persuasive evidence of a conflict of interest. But the truly worrying thing is that there’s a pattern here.

In other countries, it has long been accepted that money is paid for political favours. In China, especially, corruption is part of the business and political landscape.

Now it’s starting to look as if that’s the way we do business here, too; that the government’s door is open to whoever produces a fat chequebook. But that’s not the New Zealand way, and nor do we want it to be.

This year’s election is National’s to lose. It’s said that elections are lost by governments rather than won by oppositions, and this government is looking increasingly tainted by its murky associations with wealthy business interests.

Prime minister John Key promptly cut Williamson loose, but I wonder if public distaste has passed the point where it can be neatly managed with the usual damage control strategies. The next opinion polls may tell us.

What a lily-white lot we are

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, August 28.)

It received very little coverage in the New Zealand media, but for six months this year the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption conducted an inquiry into extremely dodgy dealings involving former ministers in the NSW state government.

The commission presented its findings to the New South Wales Parliament several weeks ago. It found that two former Labor Party ministers, Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald, had engaged in corrupt conduct involving the issue of lucrative coal mining licences.

In a nutshell, the commission alleges that Obeid – a former powerbroker in the right wing of the faction-ridden NSW Labor Party – acquired several rural properties over which the state government subsequently issued a coal exploration lease. Macdonald was the Minister of Mining at the time.

Obeid’s family and friends were in on the deal too. They made an estimated $30 million not only from selling the land, but also by investing in the company that eventually won the mining exploration licence over the area – a very tidy little arrangement.

The commission heard that Lebanese-born Obeid, whose political career was repeatedly dogged by allegations of sleaze in one form or another, had advance knowledge of the exploration lease and influenced the mining licence process.

There was an enormous amount of colourful background detail which I won’t go into here, other than to mention that the commission also heard that former champion boxer Lucky Gattellari and a wealthy property developer named Ron Medich provided Macdonald with a prostitute named Tiffanie (he was given a choice of four) in an attempt to secure favours from the government.

In an unrelated action, Gattellari is the key witness in a court case in which police allege Medich ordered the 2009 murder of a former business associate.

Meanwhile the commission is concluding a separate inquiry into claims relating to another mining licence granted by Macdonald to a company chaired by a mate who was a former trade union boss.

Google some of the names involved in this saga and you are led into a labyrinthine network of connections between politics and crime. In Australia, and especially in Sydney, the boundaries between the two worlds are often blurred.

When we hear of corruption we tend to think of Chicago and New York, but there’s very little the Americans could teach our trans-Tasman neighbours about graft and political fixing (or police corruption, come to that). The mere fact that NSW has had a permanent commission investigating claims of corruption since 1988 speaks volumes.

From a New Zealand perspective, all this seems extraordinary. We're a lily-white lot by comparison. The only New Zealand politician to be convicted of corruption is former Labour Party minister Taito Phillip Field, whose offence – getting a tiler from Thailand to work for him on the cheap in return for help with a work permit – wouldn’t cause so much as a raised eyebrow across the Ditch.

A scandal on the scale of the Obeid affair is unheard of here and would cause a sensation. But Sydneysiders are so inured to allegations of corruption that they take it in their stride.

All of which raises an intriguing question. Why, when Australia and New Zealand have so much in common, are they so different from one another in this respect?

Criminality is deeply embedded in Australian culture. It not only intrudes into politics but crosses over into trade union affairs too.

I once interviewed Norm Gallagher, head of the militant Builders Labourers Union in Melbourne. There was intense rivalry between the Victorian and NSW branches of the union at the time, and while I was with Gallagher he took a phone call supposedly warning him that a contract had been taken out on his life and a hit man was on his way from Sydney. Gallagher, who seemed unfazed, showed me a loaded shotgun that he kept behind his office door for such contingencies.

The Melbourne office of the Sydney newspaper I worked for at the time was in the same street as the docklands headquarters of the notorious Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, which was essentially a front organisation for criminals. I recall driving past on the day of the union elections and seeing men openly packing shotguns.

Not long after that, Pat Shannon, the union secretary, was shot dead in a South Melbourne pub. It was a professional hit – a relatively common event in Melbourne then. Melbourne was a very violent city, as it has been again in recent years, and many of the gangland feuds could be traced to members of the Painters and Dockers Union.

Here’s another intriguing thing about Australian crime: the people in the thick of it are often migrants, or the children of migrants.

In the 1960s one of the kingpins of the Sydney underworld was Malta-born Perce Galea, a devout Catholic whose power was based on gambling rackets. Another Maltese criminal, Joe Borg, owner of a string of brothels, was killed in 1968 by a car bomb, detonated when he turned on the ignition of his Holden ute in Bondi. 

These days the bad guys are more likely to be Lebanese, Italian, Serbian, Albanian or Asian (although we shouldn’t forget that when the Mr Asia drug syndicate was at its most active in the 1970s, the most violent criminals in Australia were New Zealanders).

New Zealand has immigrant communities too. Nelson and Wellington, for example, have substantial populations of Italian descent, but they are untainted by criminal associations. On the contrary, they are respected as honest, hard-working and community-minded.

Contrast that with Robert Trimbole’s murderous Mafia drug ring in the marijuana-growing New South Wales town of Griffith, or the Italian-dominated Carlton Crew gang formed by Alphonse Gangitano in Melbourne.

To explain the difference, we may have to look to history. We make jokes about Australians having convict ancestry, but there may well be something in their collective heritage that makes them more tolerant of crime and corruption.

Australia’s very first settlers, after all, were taken there as punishment, against their will. New Zealand, on the other hand, was colonised by people who came of their own volition and were motivated by a powerful desire to create a better society than the one they had left behind.

You have to wonder whether those contrasting origins have left permanent imprints on the two countries.

We don't know how lucky we are

(First published in The Dominion Post, July 26.)

PERHAPS OUR politicians aren’t such a bad lot after all. Consider the following.

British Conservative MP Patrick Mercer recently resigned as party whip after the embarrassing disclosure that undercover reporters had paid him £4000 – part of a promised contract worth £24,000 a year – to ask questions in Parliament, supposedly on behalf of Fijian business interests.

Only days later, two Labour peers, Lords Cunningham and Mackenzie, were suspended by their party after being filmed boasting how they could get around House of Lords rules to promote clients’ interests.

For £144,000 a year, Cunningham – a former minister in Tony Blair’s government – offered to host social events on the House of Lords terrace, lobby ministers and arrange parliamentary questions on behalf of a fictitious South Korean solar energy company. An Ulster Unionist peer, Lord Laird, was caught in the same sting and resigned from his party.

The Sunday Times quoted Cunningham as saying to undercover reporters: “Are you suggesting 10,000 pounds a month? Make that 12,000 a month. I think we could do a deal on that.”

The phrase “snouts in the trough” barely begins to describe such venality. And the suspicion is, as Spectator columnist Rod Liddle put it, that all the British politicians are at it – “it’s just that the cameras aren’t there to see them”.

Meanwhile, across the Tasman, the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party has been caught up in a long-running corruption inquiry that upholds Sydney’s reputation as the southern hemisphere's Chicago. 

The Independent Commission Against Corruption heard that disgraced ex-Labor minister Ian Macdonald granted coal exploration licences, in highly suspicious circumstances, to two mates: wealthy Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid and a former union boss, John Maitland. Obeid’s family and friends allegedly stood to make a windfall profit of $100 million.

All this puts our own politicians’ peccadilloes – whether they involve watching hotel porn, behaving like an oick in a Hanmer Springs restaurant or getting too close to an attractive reporter – into perspective. Even Taito Phillip Field, the only New Zealand politician to be convicted of bribery and corruption, looks like Mister Clean by comparison.

* * *

IT WAS GOOD to see a humble mince and cheese pie win the supreme prize at the Bakels pie awards this week. In food, as in literature and music, you can’t beat a simple thing done well.

Traditionally working men’s fare, the pie has been subverted by nouveau-riche pretensions. It’s the culinary equivalent of those working-class, inner-city suburbs that have been gentrified by the university-educated, pinot noir-drinking, Citroen-driving bourgeoisie.

The rot set in when bakers with ideas above their station started creating such excesses as chicken, cranberry and camembert pie. Now they vie with each other to produce ever more outlandish concoctions such as the salmon, scallops, leaks and crabmeat pie that featured in this week’s awards.

Another entry was made from apple, vanilla bean, frangipani, rum and cinnamon. This is an affront to the proud heritage of the pie. Any pie that can’t be ordered at a lunch bar counter by a hungry truck driver without blushing should automatically be disqualified.

Perhaps the judges’ decision to honour the mince and cheese pie (itself a refinement of the plain meat pie, and therefore viewed with suspicion by some purists) is a symbolic act of rebellion – a signal that enough is enough. But we are left with a larger problem.

The asparagus roll, the club sandwich, the filled roll, the mince savoury and the sausage roll – gastronomic delights enjoyed by generations of New Zealanders – are all on the endangered list. In fact they’re almost extinct in central city cafes, surviving only in suburbs and provincial towns.

In their place, food cabinets in fashionable cafes are stacked with dreary, bland paninis, croissants and bagels. They have the texture of carpet tiles and slightly less flavour.

We have been beguiled into eating this arid fare on the false premise that it’s sophisticated and cosmopolitan, but it is no such thing. Give me a meat pie and a cheese and onion sandwich anytime. 

* * *

THE VOCAL idiosyncrasies of broadcasting journalists are a source of endless fascination.

We’ve had the harsh, strangled vowels, the habitual mispronunciations (other than for Maori place names, which are enunciated with great care) and the squealy, little-girl voices. Now it seems the fashion among female radio and television journalists is to sound as if they’re constantly on the verge of tears.

Television New Zealand’s Ruth Wynn-Williams and Radio New Zealand’s Olivia Wix are the prime exponents of this approach, reporting every news item as if they’re barely in control emotionally and at any moment could start sobbing convulsively.

The intention, presumably, is to ensure viewers and listeners are not merely passive consumers of news, but are emotionally engaged. Judy Bailey, who started all this back in the 1990s, has a lot to answer for.