Damage control on Boag affair

The Auckland Transition Agency has swung into damage control. The Herald this morning reports Michelle Boag has been pulled from any recruitment of executive positions for the Super City.

With their decision the ATA is effectively saying their Minister was wrong. One day earlier in Parliament Rodney Hide sounded perfectly happy with Michelle Boag’s role in recruiting super city executives while being an adviser to John Banks’ mayoral campaign. He lined up with the ATA, Boag and Banks in declaring he could see no conflict of interest.

And yet all the facts were available to him: Michelle Boag’s public statements, and the tender documents released to me the day before by the ATA under the Official Information Act.

Bear in mind Boag was specifically tasked with recruiting the new super council’s chief spin doctor who was to have been appointed by March and would have been working for the duration of the mayoral campaign – the same mayoral campaign in which Boag is a campaign adviser to John Banks.

In question time Hide seemed to think it sufficient the ATA had selected the bid by Boag’s company Momentum because it was the best “in terms of quality, process, and lowest cost structure”, and he was “not responsible for what Michelle Boag does in her spare time”.

He said he was not concerned Michelle Boag’s recruitment company, Momentum, may have misled the Auckland Transition Agency when it stated in its business proposal it had no conflicts of interest to declare.

He said he saw no reason to order an investigation into the affair.

My question for the Minister: Does he stand by his statements?

My question for Aucklanders: Is this man fit to be in charge of setting up the super city?

P.S. Rodney Hide posted a comment on Red Alert last weekend in response to my post on the risk to the Waitakere Ranges posed by his latest super city bill. Rodney, if you are reading this, your comments would be most welcome on this issue.

For background on this issue, see Heather McCracken’s original story in the Herald on Sunday, my Red Alert posts from Sunday and Wednesday, Thursday’s Herald story by Derek Cheng, the transcript from question time, and the video.