Editorial: Maori TV heads should roll

Derek Fox, chairman of the Maori Television Service, might consider himself most fortunate to be still in that position. To preside over the appointment of a chief executive who turns out to be a two-bit conman is the kind of error for which resignations could be expected from the chairman and some members, if not all, of the board. Indeed one or two members of the Maori Television board did tender their resignations when the mistake came to light. Mr Fox made no such offer. In fact, he continued to maintain the whole fiasco was a matter of "relative minutiae', as he put it in an interview with the Herald afterwards.

He made other comments in that interview, published on May 4, that leave cause for concern. He still regarded the Herald's investigation as racially motivated and claimed the same attention was not applied to the mistakes of the board of Air New Zealand (now replaced) that led to last year's bailout. Presumably he was not reading newspapers during the latter half of last year.

We have delayed further comment on the John Davy appointment while reports were prepared for the board and the Minister of Finance. Those reports now seem to be completed and one at least has been made public. It has been compiled for the minister by the State Services Commission and it is mostly concerned with the board's engagement of a recruitment agency, Millennium People. The commission reports that it has been unable to verify the procedures followed by the board because the chairman would not give the commission access to board minutes without taking legal advice. The commission did not press the issue and has relied on the chairman's account of the process "as far as he was able to recall it".

The board is contemplating legal action against the recruitment agency and its reluctance may have been motivated by concern that the State Services Commission might draw conclusions from its minutes which do not help the board in any claim on the agency. Nevertheless, the use of public money that is put into the television service is a matter of wider concern. Mr Fox ought to have put no obstacles in the path of the commission when it set about its investigation.

Largely on the basis of Mr Fox's recall, the commission has concluded that Millennium People's checks of Davy's references were inadequate. In response yesterday, the agency says the commission did not investigate its reference checks. Nor has it been able to tell its side of the story in reports for the board by Ernst and Young.

Breaking its public silence yesterday, Millennium People says it put the names of six candidates for the chief executive position to the board for consideration, and that it was the board that chose Davy as the preferred candidate. At that point, the agency says, it was asked to do checks with Davy's referees, which it did. The firm says it was not asked to do credit or security checks on him and that it instructed, in writing, that those checks should be made by the board.

The State Services Commission finds nothing untoward in the way the board chose the agency, or at least in the way the chairman has told it the board went about its business. The commission has declined to criticise the performance of the agency, or its brief from the board, believing those matters would be canvassed in proceedings brought against Davy.

Davy's guilty plea has since precluded a courtroom inquiry into those issues. But they remain a matter of intense public importance. The appointment of a chief executive is the single most important decision company directors must make. When they make an error of this magnitude they should do the decent thing.

Full coverage: Maori TV