Mayor, councillor unmoved by report

Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith
The mayor of Westland and a Westland district councillor at the centre of a damning report from the auditor-general over the way $1.3million of ratepayers' money was spent on an unauthorised floodwall at Franz Josef Glacier, remain steadfast.

Officials from the Department of Internal Affairs yesterday visited the district council offices in Hokitika in the wake of the report, presented to Parliament late on Tuesday.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta is also looking into the Westland council as a result of the report.

''I have just received the OAG [Office of the Auditor-General] report and have asked officials for an urgent briefing,'' Ms Mahuta said.

The 52-page report outlines ''major concerns'' over how the full Westland District Council came to be presented with a fait accompli plan conceived by Mayor Bruce Smith and Cr Durham Havill without any input from staff, management or the West Coast Regional Council, which has responsibility for river control.

Mr Smith and Cr Havill justified it as emergency work to protect the Franz Josef sewerage ponds from possible flooding in the Waiho (Waiau) River.

But the auditor-general said that was no excuse, and there was no evidence of an emergency other than the conclusion of Mr Smith and Cr Havill.

Without any drawn plans, design or contract, a 700m-long stopbank was constructed, after Cr Havill engaged a business acquaintance from Blakely Mining to use its bulldozer, driven by Cr Havill's brother.

The work was presented retrospectively to a full meeting of the district council.

The auditor-general concludes that Cr Havill, although motivated by a concern over the river, had jeopardised his and his council's reputation.

The report also notes the regional council, as the consenting authority, only discovered Westland's plans after Mr Smith announced it on his Facebook page.

Mr Smith referred to the report yesterday as ''the auditor-general's opinion'' and he considered the matter closed.

Cr Havill, a former Westland mayor, said yesterday he still believed the council's action was right.

''We couldn't muck around. It had been highlighted we had done nothing ... I wasn't going to have that on my conscience.''

When asked if further government scrutiny was expected, Mr Smith said: ''We keep the minister [Ms Mahuta] very well informed.''

The dysfunctional nature of the council in 2016-17 - key positions were vacant and its chief executive had left - had been rectified.

A new executive team had been appointed, which meant the way the Waiho decision had been enacted under urgency was unlikely to happen again.

The action took place nearly two years ago and the report had taken 14 months to get to the table, so a lot had changed since then, Mr Smith said.

''The report will be tabled here and it will go into the file; there's some good learnings in it,'' Mr Smith said

The report was highly critical of ''blurring the lines'' between governance and management, but Mr Smith said the roles were now ''very separate'' at Westland.

The mayor said he had received only good feedback since the report had been released.

Auditor-general John Ryan said: ''We have serious concerns about the extent to which some of the elected members lost sight of the fact that their role is to govern, not manage, and that their drive to get things done needed to be balanced by an understanding of the importance of doing things right.''

There were also ''numerous examples'' of poor decision-making and poor procurement practice.

-By Brendon McMahon

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