Wellington City Council is a hive of political intrigue and back-stabbing.
Let’s take the recent revelation that Council chief of staff Nadine Walker, who’s married to Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick, was the anonymous source who made an allegation against independent councillor Tony Randle and which formed part of a $43,000 Code of Conduct investigation against him.
Similar to Mayor Tory Whanau, Ms Walker worked for the Green Party before she became council chief of staff. She claims she overheard Cr Randle allegedly saying he would go to the media over the secret Reading Cinema deal. Cr Randle denies he ever made the comment and, as an elected representative, should have been taken at his word.
But instead, Deputy Mayor Laurie Foon, also a Green Party member, lodged a Code of Conduct complaint against Cr Randle and four other councillors – Cr Ray Chung, Cr Diane Calvert, Cr Nicola Young and Cr Iona Pannett – essentially accusing them of leaking private confidential information regarding the Reading Cinema deal to the media.
As Cr Randle puts it: “This complaint from a Green Party councillor to a Green Party mayor included a claim from a staff member who is a Green Party member. That this ‘evidence’ was accepted … from a staff member who was a political appointment chosen by the mayor is simply appalling.”
Green Party political appointee, council Chief of Staff Nadine Walker
First and foremost, the fact that Nadine Walker made the claim against Cr Randle should have been dismissed immediately when Cr Randle denied he ever said it. Instead, the gossip was included in the Code of Conduct investigation carried out by lawyer Linda Clark in her witch-hunt to find the leaker.
The investigation failed to find any evidence that any one of the five councillors leaked any information at all. None of the allegations over the leaked information has ever been proved.
Interestingly, The Post newspaper’s original article breaking the news of the secret deal was published online 30 minutes after the council meeting in which the five councillors were first informed of the deal, suggesting that The Post had the information well before the meeting even began.
Further questions arise:
- Why was Nadine Walker’s identity kept secret as the person who tried to finger Cr Randle for making a statement he denies ever making?
- Why was Cr Randle never told who made the allegation against him?
- Who recommended that Nadine Walker’s identity be kept secret?
- At what stage was Linda Clark engaged to undertake the investigation and did she give the Mayor and Deputy Mayor advice to keep Nadine Walker’s identity hidden?
- Was Linda Clark involved in legal action against the council on behalf of another party (or parties) at the time she was engaged to conduct the investigation?
- If so, did her appointment have any bearing on that case? And, if so, did that give rise to a conflict of interest and should have been declared by Linda Clark?
- If there was a conflict of interest, was this communicated to the Mayor by staff?
What does require further objective investigation, in our view, is whether the action by a politically appointed chief of staff who made the allegation was an attempt to usurp or throttle a democratically elected councillor acting in the interests of Wellington ratepayers.
Better Wellington thinks that this story is far from over and raises more questions than answers. What it does demonstrate is that the Wellington City Council is a hive of political intrigue, and perhaps goes a long way towards explaining its dysfunction.
Better Wellington’s primary policy is that Party Politics must play no role in Local Government. What better example is there of the rationale behind our main policy pillar?
Winter of Discontent