Michelle Boag misleads on super city job

Which of these is correct?

1. Former National Party president and John Banks’ mayoral campaign adviser Michelle Boag telling the Herald on Sunday she had nothing to do with her recruitment agency Momentum bidding for the contract to recruit 50 senior executives for the Auckland Super City:

It was a squeaky-clean process…A lot of people involved in the ATA I know very well. I purposely kept myself out of the tender process….My networks are such that I had to be very careful about keeping me away from that tender process.

Or:2. Momentum’s business proposal to the Auckland Transition Agency which profiles Michelle Boag as a member of the project team and specifically identifies her as responsible for recruiting the position of the super city’s chief spin doctor, Manager Communications and Public Affairs.

In my view Ms Boag’s public statements on this have been misleading to say the least.

Just as alarming is the apparent inability of the Auckland Transition Agency to see a conflict of interest that is staring them in the face.  Ironically, Momentum’s business proposal even said “Momentum has no conflicts of interest to declare.”

Hang on. Michelle Boag is on the public record as an unpaid campaign adviser to the Right’s mayoral candidate John Banks.  And she features in the bid (see p12 of the proposal), and will be vetting people who should be politically neutral public servants to run the super city. And you are telling me that didn’t ring alarm bells at the Auckland Transition Agency?

How many Michelle Boags are there in this town? Surely this is the same Michelle Boag who is a former President of the National Party. Who recruited John Key and installed a new generation of National Party MPs. Who had the Winebox Inquiry filmed under false pretences and was found by Sir Ronald Davison to have deceived the Commission of Inquiry and found guilty of contempt.

More unintentional irony from Momentum’s business proposal to the ATA:

The (recruitment) process must be objective and able to reduce any perception of bias; transparent, independent, fair and equitable.

How is that transparency and fair thing going now?

I asked Rodney Hide about this in Question Time today. He didn’t seem to know about the discrepancy between Boag’s public statements and the tender documents. He advised me to ask the Auditor General to investigate. So I will.

If John Key wants Aucklanders to have any confidence in his Government’s handling of the Auckland Super City, he needs to tell Hide to pull the Auckland Transition Agency into line, to cancel the contract with Momentum and re-open the tender process.

The whole process is looking more and more like a giant exercise in handing out jobs to the National Party’s mates. National Party ideologue and favoured pollster David Farrar is being paid by the Department of Internal Affairs to poll on the super city. (Hat tip The Standard.)  The third super city bill has Rodney Hide appointing the directors to the boards of the corporate entities being set up to run Council operations.