Monster Inc - should we care?

Amid the thunder and hail rocking the council chamber on Monday, Watchers swear they heard the stirring of those vengeful ghosts of the 80s, Ruthanasia and Rogernomics, rattling their favourite toys: electricity market reform, health sector "restructuring" and SOEs.

In the smouldering ruins left by the Diva’s ethnic cleansing of the old boys network there has arisen a new entity. It’s called the new boys’ network and its influence is nowhere more evident than in the murky council decision-outsourcing arena where Wanganui Inc operates.

Back in the days when it first stirred in the Diva’s and Dotty’s primordial soup, this beast was tagged Monster Inc by a quick-thinking Chron sub-editor.

Reading between the lines which pass for open, transparent government, it seems Monster Inc chair Ron Janes, the Diva et al have already picked the (non councillor) person they want to join their gang but ran into resistance at last week’s strategy meeting. Thus, the matter re-appeared on the agenda for the full council meeting.

Some councillors started to hear not only the rattling of ghosts, but the burning torches and rattling pitchforks of an attempted putsch by Janes, fondly remembered for visiting havoc on the Wanganui health sector*. Janes had put his name to a letter asking that, following the departure of Graeme (GK) Taylor, the balance of power on Monster Inc be changed to favour private business representatives. The letter apparently had the backing of Chamber of Comics president Warren Ruscoe.

The Diva declared the letter out of bounds to the public after Cr Bullock waved it in the air and said it degraded councillors. She did, however, win her bid to have discussion about the letter taken out of the secret agenda. Watchers figure the letter, in Janes’ charmingly outspoken manner, slagged off councillors as lacking in skills and business nous, though it’s not clear how he and Ruscoe rate existing board members Rangi Wills and the Diva.

Replacing GK with a non-councillor would change the balance from the 3:3 council:private split proposed by the Diva when Monster Inc was being set up, and give the majority vote to private interests.

Cue the sound of alarm bells among the likes of Barbara Bullock and Sue Westwood. In the same breath as it was being asked to bury its economic development committee - which is required to operate transparently in the interests of ratepayers - the council was being asked to further alienate key economic development functions and spending authority.

The vote went, as so many do, with a whimper. Wanganui Inc can anoint its preferred person but the council gets the final say, and the Diva agreed that nothing prevented a councillor with the right skills getting the nod. To which we can only append that immortal phrase, "Yeah Right!".

As Rob Vinsen has kindly pointed out in a comment to LawsWatch, Monster Inc could find economic development funding from outside the council’s coffers easier to win if it’s seen not to be unduly influenced by the council. And that's certainly been the plan all along, with Janes saying back in June that the $800,000 already set aside for them in this "cash strapped" city won't be nearly enough, and that more like $1.5 million to $2 million a year would be his aim.

LawsWatch wonders, however, whether that’s sufficient reason for our elected representatives to further abrogate their responsibilities to a small cartel of the Diva and his mates, meeting behind closed doors and making public only what they want the public to know.

As a CCO (Council Controlled Organisation) Monster Inc is required by the Local Government Act to report half yearly and yearly to the council, but outside of that, it appears it’s okay for the chairman to just drop the council a line from time to time telling them his version of what the gang’s been up to.

That’s a bit like the new system of press scrutiny where the Chron apologises for not attending meetings but then publishes a summary supplied by the chairman.

Vision Party policy gives no hint of what is effectively an outsourcing of the economic development role but this issue has become something of a canary in the mineshaft that the council is being driven down in the name of the Diva’s vision. LawsWatch wonders what those ratepayers of Castlecliff, Aramoho et al, so beloved of the Diva, would say if all this had been explained in words of one syllable.

Council / business partnerships have achieved some notable successes throughout the world. But they've also descended into squabbling, recriminations, and (as anyone who's watched City Hall or The Sopranos knows) sometimes even widespread corruption. We're not saying that any of these outcomes is our prediction for Monster Inc., but what we are saying is that conducting public business out in the open is the surest way to ensure transparency and accountability are maintained, that people are informed about - and unite behind - a common vision.

Some Monster Inc factoids:

• $42,000 in directors’ fees has been budgeted by the council for 2005-06
• It gets to distribute the lion’s share -- $200,000 of the $350,000 community contracts money, with events like the Mayoral Mile having the inside running
• Its newly-appointed CEO, John Quigley, will start next month
• The current board comprises Ron Janes (ex CEO of Good Health Wanganui), GK Taylor, the Diva, Cr Rangi Wills (nominally Ratepayers rep, actually a Vision recruit), Nygllhuw Morris (a staunch Vision/Diva supporter) and Bruce Nicholson (business partner of the incoming CEO David Warburton).

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* Ron Janes's time as CEO of Good Health Wanganui was given this epitaph by none other than Jill Pettis, speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, June 14, 1995:

...246 staff will be losing their jobs at Good Health Wanganui. Health is being reduced to the lowest common denominator. It is absolutely disgraceful ...The absolutely disgraceful thing that is hanging over the staff at Jubilee Hospital - who are employed by Good Health Wanganui - is that they were told to take pay cuts or the hospital would close. What an absolutely disgraceful thing to say to staff - take a pay cut or the hospital will close! ...I do not know whether we will see Mr Ron Janes turn up on the board of a State-owned enterprise in the near future - I think we might. Good luck to him. Since he has been at Good Health Wanganui he has actually served the Government very well. I am not so sure that he has served the people of Wanganui so well, but he has been a loyal servant to this Government.

And that, we guess, is the question hanging over Monster Inc - will it serve the people of Wanganui well, or will it be a loyal servant of Council? And are the appointees capable of differentiating between the two when necessary?

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