Meng Foon resigned as Race Relations Commissioner after a few days of prevaricating. Photo / Phil Yeo, File
Meng Foon resigned as Race Relations Commissioner after a few days of prevaricating. Photo / Phil Yeo, File
Opinion
EDITORIAL
If accountability had public currency, it would have been chronically devalued in recent months.
This week, Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon has accepted his departure after his intended resignation was pitched into doubt last week.
It was revealed on Friday that Foon was intending to resign on Sundayafter he was told it was “highly probable” he would be removed as commissioner for not adequately disclosing that a company he was a director of had received more than $2 million from the Ministry of Social Development to provide emergency housing.
When the news of his pending resignation broke prematurely, Foon tried to walk back on his departure, saying he wanted to further engage with Associate Justice Minister Dr Deborah Russell to go over his perceived conflict of interest.
There was a time that such a lack of self-awareness would be risible. A high-ranking public servant is not allowed to be the director of a company collecting grants from the government. Fait accompli, pick up your briefcase and walk with as much dignity as one can muster.
However, Foon’s explanation for believing he could relitigate the facts and even perhaps remain in the role warrants further scrutiny. Foon said other ministers had not declared their interests and he asked why he was being put under the bus when others weren’t.
Foon risked owning National leader Christopher Luxon’s “wet and whiney” sobriquet but, as far as points go, this is a sharp one.
Former Transport Minister Michael Wood was asked a dozen times to divest his shares in Auckland International Airport before his portfolio was finally revealed and he was stripped of his ministerial titles. Yesterday he finally resigned as a minister after extensive further shareholdings were exposed.
At one of his last appearances as Minister for Auckland this week, Michael Wood listened to concerns from Muriwai residents about the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Ex-Economic Development and Forestry Minister Stuart Nash will leave politics, under his own steam, at the next election after leaking confidential Cabinet information to two donors. Also stood down from ministerial duties, he remains as MP for Napier.
There have been other alleged conflicts of interest, and not just within the governing party. National’s Barbara Kuriger agreed to resign from her spokesperson roles for the party due to a “personal dispute” her family is in with the Ministry for Primary Industries. She remains the MP for Taranaki-King Country.
Listing more recent episodes risks offering more cases of precedent for the next errant public servant to cite.
It may be argued that expedience spares taxpayers the expense of by-elections but each demonstrates a grievous lack of judgment.
Accountability is accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions, words, decisions or even inactions. Leaders must exemplify the level of personal accountability they expect in others, or lose the credibility needed to hold others accountable.
New Zealand is seeing what happens when the leadership of a country flouts the principles of moral or ethical behaviour. Inevitably, others follow in a woeful goose-and-gander cycle.
We await someone standing up and demonstrating fortitude and true character in accounting for themselves. When a conflict of interest is exposed, pick up your briefcase and walk.
