A whitewash

The Auditor-General is supposed to be our watchdog against corruption and conflicts of interest in government. But today, they threw their integrity and reputation on the bonfire to protect National's Katherine Rich:

Conflict of interest claims against former National MP Katherine Rich will not be investigated by the Office of the Auditor-General.

[...]

"We are satisfied that there are no matters we need to investigate further. We have not identified problems with the management of conflicts of interest by the HPA.

"We consider it would be too simplistic to assume that the aims and activities of the HPA and FGC are incontrovertibly opposed and utterly incompatible, such that a person who was associated with one organisation was impossibly compromised from any association with the other.

"Similarly, it would be too vague and indirect to conclude that it is impermissible for Mrs Rich to participate in any matter relating to a broad general subject-matter, such as alcohol or tobacco."

The OAG said that its review of HPA's minutes had not identified any matters or decisions that might raise serious concerns about its management of conflicts of interest.

Right. So Rich can decide on alcohol, tobacco and sugar, despite being a lobbyist for those very industries. And there was no conflict, despite the fact that she actually did make such decisions. As for the concerns about her hiring Carrick Graham to subcontract sewerbloggers to run PR hits on health researchers, that's dismissed as "not relat[ing] to Mrs Rich's conduct on the HPA", despite it being a serious conflict in and of itself.

And the kicker? They didn't even bother to interview her. Some fucking watchdog. Instead of protecting the public interest, the Auditor-General is just whitewashing for the powerful.

An unmanaged conflict

Katherine Rich is a member of the government-appointed Health Promotion Agency, responsible for (as it says on its website) "inspiring all New Zealanders to lead healthier lives".

Katherine Rich is also Chief Executive of the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council, a lobby group for the food, sugar, tobacco and alcohol industries. As part of this role, she subcontract lobbyist Carrick Graham to run dirty politics hits on health researchers via Cameron Slater's sewerblog.

Rich's two roles appear to be in direct conflict. But the government says that that conflict is managed appropriately. Bullshit. While it has been declared, as Kevin hague pointed out in Question Time today, Rich has never recused herself from a single discussion or decision of the HPA, despite a clear requirement in the Crown Entities Act that she does so on any matter in which she has an interest.

There are two possibilities here. Firstly, despite its name, function, and the extensive contents of its website, the Health Promotion Agency has never in the time that Rich has been a member dealt with any issue related to sugar, alcohol, tobacco, or any of the other unhealthy products she peddles.

The second is that the chair of the HPA is a muppet and Rich's conflict is effectively unmanaged, contrary to the law.

Which seems more likely?

A lesson for National

The Sunday Star-Times quotes Katherine Rich as saying that accepting the help of the Exclusive Brethren cost National the last election. The full quote is in this longer piece about the Brethren and politics:

"I appreciate the Brethren thought they were being helpful to New Zealand in getting rid of Labour, but it's my personal opinion they lost us the election. The whiff of association was off-putting to a number of voters.

"My gut feeling is that their all-male line-up, in that famous Brethren press conference, made many women voters wonder just what their conservative vision for New Zealand was, and tipped the scales in favour of Labour," she said.

There's a lesson in here for National: don't crawl into bed with fundamentalist Christians who run anonymous smear campaigns. They are political poison, and the association will be punished at the ballot box.