KEY POINTS:
In recent weeks it has become obvious that there are different employment rules for our senior public servants than for the rest of us. This week Clint Rickards finally accepted what everyone in New Zealand has known for years - his police career is over. He was, until
his spectacular fall from grace, touted among the ruling elite in Wellington as the next police commissioner.
He still defiantly says that he has done nothing wrong. He has also claimed that his convicted rapist mates - currently in prison - haven't done anything wrong, either. I believe that he jumped before he had to face 11 internal police charges. We know at least one of the charges related to allegations of sex on the bonnet of a police car.
Many in the police hierarchy knew what Rickards and his mates had been doing to young, vulnerable women, yet the police kept promoting him anyway. If it hadn't been for the intervention of Helen Clark, Rickards would have been in the commissioner's chair. It would have been interesting to see how he, as our top cop, would have prosecuted matters such as sexual violations against women and police misconduct.
Rickards was cleared of rape charges but I believe he misused his power. Astonishingly, he still doesn't get it. But he knows his credibility with his fellow cops is zilch. If he were given a golden handshake as a way of getting rid of him, that would be contemptible. Since Rickards was suspended in 2004 he has continued to receive a full salary, which now totals more than $500,000. Astonishingly, while he was suspended, his employer also gave him the keys to a brand new car.
If everyone in New Zealand was given this sort of treatment, this country would indeed be a worker's paradise.
Look at what happened when Cabinet minister Trevor Mallard recently slugged an annoying opponent. Not only did Mallard get to keep his job; he was arguably given a promotion.
It seems that different rules apply to our senior representatives. Look at the outrage against Madeleine Setchell, who was employed as a spin doctor for the Ministry for the Environment. It's clear now that she was the only innocent person in this debacle.
Yet she is the one who lost her job and is apparently now blacklisted for any other public job. Her boss, Hugh Logan - who is the head of the ministry - sacked her because her partner worked for John Key. Logan was wrong and was found to have acted badly by his boss Dr Mark Prebble.
Nevertheless, Logan kept his job. Prebble, who is effectively the lord of our entire public service, admitted he had acted wrongly as well. As punishment he gave himself a fine.
For years, we've had to put up with being told that we pay our public servants huge salaries compatible to the private sector on the basis that they have no job tenure and take full responsibility for their mistakes.
Going by these results, it's all hogwash.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you were accused of a serious crime, and your boss put you on indefinite leave, with full pay. And after a few years when you realised the game was up your boss gave you a golden handshake and let you resign. And if you were responsible for the sacking of an innocent fellow worker, you were allowed to choose your own punishment. You could even wait for a pay rise and decide to give some of it back as a way of absolving your conscience. Naturally you'd also give yourself a telling off in front of your mirror just to make it official.
Mind you, the above nonsense seems almost reasonable when compared to a senior cabinet minister who, when he assaults a work colleague, is put in charge of our country's employment laws and work behaviour. The new minister's department upholds the right of employers to dismiss their employees for taking sickies, turning up late for work, swearing, falling asleep and other such misdemeanours.
There is a parallel universe in New Zealand where our masters at the top of the taxpayer-funded food chain are paid upwards of 10 times the salary of the average worker and never get the sack no matter what they do.
George Orwell in Animal Farm, was right: some workers are more equal than others.
