Claire Trevett: Why Govt buckled on revealing fast-track conflicts of interest

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THREE KEY FACTS
Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
OPINION

It is not often New Zealand First’s
Shane Jones looks like the most virtuous person in the room, but after the Government’s preferred fast-track projects were released he has sat there with his halo only slightly askew.

That was by dint of his quick ‘fessing up to projects on that list he declared a potential conflict of interest over — whether because of a donation or personal link — and stepped out of the room for.
Meanwhile, his National Party colleagues were a lot more reticent about it, initially saying only that various ministers had declared various conflicts and it was traditional for those to be dealt with behind the closed doors of Cabinet confidentiality.
Even Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop — the minister with say over which projects get put forward for consideration by the expert panels — would not reveal whether he declared any conflicts.
Alas, Jones’ transparency about it — openly admitting he had absented himself from discussions on projects involving his iwi, his family members, and a donor or two — had put the rest of them in a bit of an uncomfortable position.
Then on Friday, the ministers buckled and released at least some information on conflicts and how they were dealt with.
The compromise was to set out conflicts declared during the process of choosing the lucky 149 projects by the three main fast-track ministers: Jones, Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown (although Brown, apparently, had none). It also set out how it was handled: passing on decisions on those projects to other ministers.
What was missing was which ministers inside Cabinet (including the fast-track ministers) identified conflicts when Cabinet met to sign off on the final list of projects. It was stated those ministers left the room when those projects came up.
It is understood that was a compromise after the Cabinet Office baulked at releasing details over the declarations, apparently because it was standard procedure not to.
Since 2012, a summary of situations where a conflict has had to be managed has been published — sometimes specific, sometimes vague. The reasons are apparently to preserve Cabinet confidentiality as well as personal confidentiality.
However, keeping these things under wraps is a bit harder now than 30 years ago, when there was not such a wealth of information within reach of a person with a computer.
The question may well be who a conflict is disclosed by — and how bad it looks when it is flushed out rather than voluntarily disclosed.
The risk of getting caught out is a powerful motivator for ministers not to hide conflicts. In the past, ministers have been sacked over badly handled conflicts.
So after earlier refusing to answer the question, the information released on Friday showed Bishop had indeed declared a conflict over Winton, a property company that donated to the National Party and for which Bishop had advocated in the past.
That was not because of the donation but because of the advocacy. Bishop said he had done so “out of an abundance of caution” because of the “possible perception of having publicly advocated for it”.
An “abundance of caution” was the same reason Jones did not hesitate before listing his own conflicts: if you leave it to your enemies to unearth your conflicts, it can make things look a bit murky.
Ever since the Government unveiled its plans for a new fast-track regime, one issue has bedevilled it: the risk of conflicts of interest coming into play. When it comes to money or decisions that significantly benefit a private company, more disclosure is better for the public to have trust in the process.
If the process involved is controversial, and some of the projects in it are controversial, the last thing the Government needs is for the ministers behind it to also become controversial.
That was why ministers ended up ceding their powers to decide which projects made the cut and instead will leave it in the hands of expert panels: the biggest concession in the law so far.
But there are still concerns being aired about conflicts coming into play, from the projects to who ministers appoint to those expert panels.
There are many trying to catch them out — Opposition MPs, the media, those who may be disgruntled their project missed out, advocacy groups, and members of the public who may feel peeved that something is happening in their ‘hood over which they have no say.
Jones knows all of that from bitter experience after years of having aspersions cast on him as the overlord of the Provincial Growth Fund. Back then, it was the National MPs he now sits with who were prosecuting him for it.
Jones is no fool, and well aware there would be more scrutiny on him than the other two ministers.
That is partly by dint of what he describes as his long and varied life, meaning he has picked up all manner of friends, acquaintances who donate, and relatives — from the nephs on the couch to sons to third cousins.
He listed eight projects by six entities as conflicts.
However, the extra scrutiny is also because Jones is in charge of the least publicly palatable projects — the mining. He has also used a less nuanced approach than Bishop or Brown in his sales pitch for the fast-track law. That could best be summed up by Apocalypse Now’s famous “I love the smell of napalm in the mornings” quote.
His war cry for mining and resources over poor Freddy the Frog and attempts to argue with any protest group he can find were always going to make him a target. And he knows it.
Little wonder he took the once bitten, twice shy approach to pre-empting his disclosure: politics dictated it.
The other minister who took that approach – some might say to the extreme – was Attorney General Judith Collins.
Collins was stung deeply by conflict of interest allegations swirling around her interactions with the company Oravida in 2013, of which her husband was a director.
The memory of that is presumably why she moved very early to declare an almost blanket personal conflict of interest when it came to the fast-track law. As a result, she gets no papers, leaves the room for meetings on it, and gets asked no questions about it. She effectively lives in a fast-track-free bubble. Trouble would only come knocking if she started breaching those steps.
That was disclosed publicly way back in April when the Cabinet Office last released a summary of ministers’ conflicts.
In keeping concerns at bay, a lot will ride on how meritorious people think the projects that get fast-tracking are. Community unrest will do more damage than whether people think a conflict of interest was handled.
The hue and cry since the list was released was expected as people picked at the projects they didn’t like.
The Government response to that hue and cry was also predicted: Jones thundering about frogs and “underfed wasps”.
But nature got its own back on Jones: the reason he did not get to Wellington in time for the big announcement of the lucky fast-track winners was because a bird had built a nest in the engine of the plane that was to fly him from Kerikeri.
The flight was cancelled. Freddy the Frog finally has an ally.
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