Brownlee Gerry: Urgent Debates — Setchell Inquiry—Report to State Services Commissioner 
Brownlee Gerry: Urgent Debates — Setchell Inquiry—Report to State Services Commissioner 
[Volume:643;Page:13080] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. This is a matter that requires urgent public attention. New Zealand and New Zealanders rely very heavily on a neutral Public Service. One of the things that New Zealand is able to tout about itself around the world is that we are a country free of corruption a country where officials will deal with people in a fair and reasonable manner and a country where the politics are stable because the bureaucracy that backs up all the political activity or the policy delivery is free from the sort of encumbrance that many countries put over the top of those who serve them in their Civil Services. I think that both the report generated by Don Hunn and the response to it from Dr Prebble are important for us to consider at some length. Therefore I thank the Speaker for giving the country the opportunity to hear all the points in an extended debate on this particular issue. 
The first point is that the issue arose out of the decision by the chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment to effectively sack a communications manager because she was in a relationship with a press secretary who worked for the Leader of the Opposition. There was never a question asked about anyone’s political persuasion. A whole lot of assumptions were behind the decision. What is interesting about Mr Hunn’s report—which I hasten to say is not a report that reaches any conclusions or makes any recommendations but is simply a chronology of how events that relate to this issue unfolded over a period of some months—is that it is apparent that the Ministry for the Environment effectively headhunted Madeleine Setchell to come and take on the job of communications manager. This is something that was unknown to me before it was released today. The ministry went through a process of advertising for people and it went through interviews but it made no appointment. The ministry went out and looked to see whom it could get to do the job and it identified Madeleine Setchell because of her professionalism and the capability she had demonstrated over a long number of years in the communications industry. 
Taking an aside it is interesting that the only person who comes out of this report with any credit at all is Madeleine Setchell. The Ministry for the Environment invited her to come and discuss a job with it. During the interview process she made it abundantly clear that she was in a relationship with a press secretary in the Leader of the Opposition’s office. She discussed the fact that on previous occasions her partner had had jobs in the New Zealand media where there could have been an equal conflict of interest perceived and she discussed how the pair of them managed that issue. The people on the interview panel—remembering that there was not just one person on the interview panel but three people—accepted that in her mind there was an understanding of potential conflict and a willingness to engage in managing that conflict. They were convinced that no issue would arise from her employment. 
However some days later someone in the then Minister for the Environment’s office a Mr Hurring heard that Madeleine Setchell had been appointed. Interestingly Mr Hurring works for the Minister’s office but has a long long background as a political activist. He is paid for by the State and was working in the then Minister for the Environment’s office. He phoned up the chief executive of the Ministry for the Environment and asked whether it was true about the relationship between Ms Setchell and the press secretary in Mr Key’s office. Mr Logan said he did not know of that but that he would investigate. That was Mr Logan’s first mistake. I will return to it in a few moments. 
Mr Logan made those investigations and found that it was true and he reported that to the then Minister. He appears to have gone into some sort of a blind panic. We assume that that was because he knew what sort of Minister he was dealing with. He knew he was dealing with a ruffian and with someone who was overtly political in the exercise of his ministry. I suspect that he was terrified to go and tell the Minister that the ministry had someone working on its communications who was connected to the National Party is this particular way—albeit at quite a long arm’s length distance. 
When Mr Logan had his discussion with Mr Benson-Pope the then Minister we are led to believe that Mr Benson-Pope rather calmly said that that might make it difficult for him to be free and frank. With that rather gentle piece of advice Mr Logan trekked back from the location of the meeting to his office summonsed Madeleine Setchell and told her that it was over and that she was going. In the Hunn report it states that Ms Setchell was shocked to get this news. She asked the chief executive why she was being asked to leave. In the Hunn report it is clear that the response from Mr Logan when she asked whether it was because the Minister did not want her in the job was yes. So here it is: there was Mr Logan firstly being cowered by the phone call from the political activist in David Benson-Pope’s office then having to front to the Minister with we assume trembling knees and finally having to go to Ms Setchell and say: “I’m sorry; I am not as frightened of you as I am of the Minister so you’re gone.” 
In the New Zealand system the chief executive is responsible for the employment of staff in the ministries. The chief executive should not cave in to that sort of pressure. The chief executive should not give away to the bullying tactics of any Minister. The chief executive most important should not give away to the hectoring of some party official who has located himself inside a Minister’s office. 
All this should not come as any particular surprise to us because the Ministry for the Environment has had a problem for a wee while. I refer to the Hunn report where it states that the Ministry for the Environment had decided to engage in an exercise of “realignment” and recognised that it would be the delivery arm for the “fourth plank in the Government’s three point strategic agenda of economic transformation”. I must say that wonderful line “the fourth plank in the Government’s three point strategic agenda of economic transformation” is absolutely typical of what one would expect from the left in this country. It means nothing and tells us nothing. The subtext is that the Ministry for the Environment will become a political arm of the Government. It is as simple as that. In the process of the ministry’s realigning itself to be a sort of Government-paid agency of the Labour Party staff and other resources had to be realigned to meet the new challenge. So it was no surprise that the moment that the Minister was made aware of Ms Setchell’s relationship she was gone. 
If anyone wants confirmation of just how political that particular ministry has become then he or she has to think back only a few months to when the Ministry for the Environment was running adverts in New Zealand newspapers stating: “Do you want to work on issues that are at the forefront of New Zealand’s political agenda?”. The adverts went on to state: “We will be looking for people to be part of a ministry that is at the forefront of New Zealand’s political agenda.” This is not some sort of non-governmental organisation; it is a Government department. It is a Government department that is setting itself up to be another vehicle another part of the Labour Party. 
And the worst thing is that Mr Logan seems to have been singularly unaware of what he was doing. When he finally had to face the music over the dismissal of Madeleine Setchell he simply said to the public by way of a press release: “This is how I saw it. I was not aware when Madeleine Setchell was appointed to the position of communications manager that her partner was the Leader of the Opposition’s chief media adviser. This is something I should have been told. If I had been told I would have recognised before she was employed that I had a potential conflict of interest to consider.” That tells us that in Government departments now if someone is the best person and is the most capable of doing the job but has a relationship with someone in an Opposition political party then that person is out. That person is gone and has no place. Then Mr Logan stated: “I first knew of it through a phone call requesting information from the Minister’s adviser.” So he admits it was the paid party hack sitting in David Benson-Pope’s office watching these things for the Minister who got him on to the case of sacking Madeleine Setchell. 
As to the rest of what I would say about this matter I made the point before that it was the Minister who said to Mr Logan: “Get rid of her.” The interesting thing is that for nearly 4 weeks the Minister came into this House day after day saying that he knew nothing of this matter. He said that he was innocent that it was all a matter for the chief executive and that it was nothing to do with him. Well we know what happened to him in the end. He got found out. 
But the worst thing is that Mr Logan was talking through all of this time to the State Services Commissioner. The State Services Commissioner would have us believe that he gave the advice that it was wrong to get rid of Madeleine Setchell and that the proper thing to do would have been to manage the issue but that at the end of the day it was the chief executive’s decision. So when the chief executive caved and gave in the poor old State Services Commissioner was apparently powerless to do anything. I say in the House this afternoon that I do not believe that because there were 3 weeks—3 weeks—when the Minister as I said before was denying in the House that he knew anything about the matter. Conveniently during that period the State Services Commissioner wrote an article that was published in the  
Dominion Post 
 in which he stated that he believed that David Benson-Pope knew nothing of this matter. He put that in the newspaper and into the public arena when he knew it was wrong. 
How do we know that he knew it was wrong? Because when we look at the chronology put together by Mr Hunn we note that as early as the first week in July while Dr Prebble was on sabbatical in Britain the Deputy State Services Commissioner phoned him up to tell him what had happened and to tell him that this was becoming a bigger public issue. We are expected to believe that even through these conversations and through his sitting at his word processor writing out the article to be published in the  
Dominion Post 
 he did not remember that he knew that David Benson-Pope and his office had intervened directly to see Ms Setchell dismissed. That is not credible. That is not believable. If that is not a cover-up then it is bordering on a cover-up. 
This man now says that he has received Mr Hunn’s report and he has to decide what to do with it. He said to the Government Administration Committee today that he will do all sorts of things to put things back together. Well what is broken here? The only things that are broken here are the longstanding conventions that public servants do not act in an overtly political way and that Ministers do not dive into departments and start telling them how to act in an overtly political way. We are fortunate that only two departments are fingered in this report. We are worried about others but only two are fingered here. It seems to me that the man who has presided over that attack on our Public Service and on the credibility of public servants is the man who now says that even though he has not been totally straight with us he wants the opportunity to continue to see what can be done to tidy things up. Well that also is not credible and I have to say it is barely tenable. 
I think that New Zealanders need to ask themselves a serious question: if Government members are so willing to politicise the Public Service for their own ends why should New Zealanders not believe that the Electoral Finance Bill that members have in front of them at the moment is an attempt to simply say that because Government members are so good and so capable and because they are so out of step with the rest of the country the best thing is that they should be allowed to dip into the taxpayer dollar legally to ensure their re-election next year? These two items are not disconnected and they have an awfully large “c” word—corruption—that sits right over the top of them. 
This report from Mr Hunn is a good one because it tells us what really happened. The report from Dr Prebble is an excuse.