David Farrar at Kiwiblog has published an interesting addendum to our Better Wellington article about the role of Tory Whanau’s Chief of Staff, Nadine Walker, in the council-paid investigation into supposed media leaks about the now-dead Reading Cinema deal.
Our article exposed the role that Walker played in singling out selected councillors.
Walker, who is herself a former Green Party adviser and is the wife of Greens Co-leader Chloe Swarbrick, consulted with Parliamentary staff of the Green Party to get their advice on a short-list of people to do the investigation, according to documents released under the Official Information Act and published on Kiwiblog.
Farrar writes:
Documents just released under the OIA reveal that the person who came up with a shortlist of people to conduct the inquiry was also Nadine Walker, and that this was based on talking to Green Party staff in Parliament. Then she helped select the reviewer.
So Nadine Walker was the anonymous whistleblower. She also did the short-list of reviewers, helped select the reviewer and then presumably got interviewed by the reviewer in her capacity as the anonymous whistleblower.
This is beyond belief. The conflicts of interest are huge. There is no criticism of the reviewer … but with WCC who poisoned and politicised the Code of Conduct complaint process as an act of political utu. How could they allow the anonymous complainant to be the person who shortlists the reviewer?
This is a very good question, and one in which Better Wellington thinks deserves an answer.
We have said it once, and we will say it again: party politics must play no role in the administration of the Wellington City Councii.
