Far from it. The grinch of Christmas, in the form of messy code of conduct complaints, has been sucking the joy out of anything remotely festive as the Dunedin City Council prepares to close its doors for the festive season.
As the end of the year creeps closer, its not just City Hall where relationships are damaged and a mess has to be cleaned up.
The even bigger House in Wellington is also in uproar, as the new tenants rip out the political carpets, replace the curtains and change the furniture put there by the previous residents.
Its somewhat jarring that so much frenzied activity and serious stuff is happening in our democratically elected chambers at a time when New Zealand is usually well into winding down mode for the summer break.
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich and city councillor Carmen Houlahan will be wanting to press the fast-forward button on the rest of the year.
Last week, independent investigator Jordan Boyle, from Dyhrberg Drayton Employment Law, determined the behaviour of both has materially breached the council’s code of conduct.
A little more thought and professionalism from the mayor several months ago might have stopped this whole sorry debacle from kicking off.
Mr Radich had told Radio New Zealand that the racist comments were “a relatively minor thing” and also let slip other details from the publicly excluded meeting which led to the woman being identified.
The complaint against Cr Houlahan was laid by Cr Barker, who had been bombarded with eight missed calls in quick succession and 17 text messages from Cr Houlahan after Crs Barker and O’Malley complained about Mr Radich.
Mr Boyle said the breach of conduct by Cr Houlahan was “material”, which was a high threshold to reach, he said.
He considered it brought her into disrepute.
Last week, the council accepted Mr Boyle’s findings and Cr Houlahan was asked to apologise in writing to Cr Barker.
The mayor had previously apologised for his lapses in judgement.
This whole messy business would never have started had Mr Williams, who the council censured for his comments, kept his nasty racist thoughts to himself in the pub that day in August.
There are still those who think he should have resigned for dragging his community board, and the broader city council, into the mud.
But Mr Radich’s poor handling of the affair made things worse and caused a chain of unfortunate events which has come back to bite the council and leaves elected members with a lot of work to do to become a unified team in the new year.
In the middle of it all has been Cr Barker.
She has been especially badly treated for taking a dignified and principled stand, one which led to her upbraiding the mayor for his actions and resigning as deputy mayor. How many deputies have the courage to put their money where their mouth is like that?
Cr Houlahan’s treatment of Cr Barker has been unfair and over-the-top. The tone and persistence of the text messages, released publicly during the code of conduct investigation, was unnecessary. These codes of conduct complaints and inquiries do not serve ratepayers and residents well. The city can't afford the time, cost, and resources of litigating such matters, when there are more pressing issues to deal with.
We can't expect our leaders to be perfect when none of us are, but as governors they need to conduct themselves with some decorum.
How can we trust councillors to make important decisions on our behalf if we can't rely on them to treat each other civilly?
