Whistle blowing scandal at Ministry of Transport grows

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
11
11

This is unbelievable…

Minister won’t investigate if fraudster forced out whistleblowers

The Transport Minister has refused to order an investigation into whether an “incredibly manipulative” fraudster was able to restructure attempted whistleblowers out of the ministry.

For three years Ministry of Transport staff raised concerns about Joanne Harrison’s conduct and the lack of contracts and documentation surrounding the deals she was signing.

The chief executive at the time, Martin Matthews, repeatedly gave Harrison the benefit of the doubt.

It wasn’t until 2016 that Harrison was finally caught out by an external audit – in that time she’d stolen $723,000.

In February she was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Labour’s Sue Moroney said three staff complained about Harrison in October 2015, and were then all made redundant just two months later.

During Question Time at Parliament yesterday Ms Moroney asked Transport Minister Simon Bridges whether he’d make sure they’d been treated fairly.

“Will he order an investigation to ensure that staff who raised concerns about Joanne Harrison’s financial transactions and were subsequently made redundant in a restructuring influenced by Joanne Harrison were treated fairly by his ministry?”

Mr Bridges responded that any investigation “is a matter for the ministry” – it has already refused to investigate.

“What is now very clear from public interviews, from the select committee … and other documentary evidence as well is that the person in question here was not involved in the decision making process in the restructure,” Mr Bridges said.

Ms Moroney asked how the fraud could possibly have happened.

“How did a person convicted of fraud in New Zealand, also under investigation for fraud in Australia, get employed by his ministry to a senior management role?”

Mr Bridges responded that the answer to that question was “very simple”.

“She was incredibly manipulative, dishonest person who has now gone to jail for some time.

…if she was an incredibly manipulative and dishonest person, then she the exact type of person who would have restructured the whistleblowers who nailed her out of the Ministry. That Simon Bridges is just shrugging this of means he’s covering for the Ministry of Transport.

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11 COMMENTS

  1. Shocking. Clearly there is a toxic culture at the Ministry of Transport that condones fraud (who the fuck has heard of a CEO and management giving the benefit of the doubt and hiring convicted fraudsters, as well as removing anyone who speaks out).

    No wonder NZ is a basket case for transport with this type of goings on and does Bridges no credit being part of the enablers.

  2. No wonder the moron Bridges is struggling with a fraudster, he cannot see the problem, its biz as usual in his world. There is no way on Gods green earth he wants a proper look at this.

    Harrison, it strongly appears, got rid of those who suspected she was up to no good and complained about her. Her boss Martin Matthews tolerated that just fine and dandy.

    Now, I tend to recall some guy recently called Alfred who via PowerPoint presentations told the world that is the way the National party do business!

    And so what do National do? Give her incompetent idiot boss Martin Matthews the Auditor Generals job, a job where he is supposed to be THE TOP auditor in the government. Holy shit, National do not want things detected, do they??? http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/331032/labour-to-seek-review-of-auditor-general-s-appointment

    And “she was incredibly manipulative, dishonest person…” Well how fucking ironic for Simon Bridges and his party. Talk about kindred spirits.

    People, we are looking at a person in Harrison who lives and breathes core National Party values.

    Give her the next blue ribbon seat once she is paroled in the next few weeks, she is the perfect National Party MP and dare I say, Minister, or even PM! She could in the very least work in the Prime Ministers Dirty Politics office.

    • I’m not sure if he’s still keeping track – but have you ever seen Frank’s ‘Crony Watch’?
      And those are the ones that they can’t keep from the public.

      And I’m aware of all the “Labour did it too” challenges that’ll probably follow ….. but the admin wing of gubbamint is now actually a fucking shambles and can’t rightly claim the title of being a public service – not too dissimilar from the concept of a 4th Estate of Public Sphere.

  5. What is shocking is what’s now a pet issue with me – the state of our so-called public service.
    A few times I’ve asked myself why it is that opposition parties can’t see reform as an issue.
    It reminds me so much of the 70’s when it was assumed by Australians that Kiwis were better ‘leaders’ in their various institutions, and NZers assumed that the land of Queen and Country was the best place to find the ‘heads’ for their goubbamint administratio.
    Of course IT’S NOT little public service peons at the coal face that are the problem – it’s the muddle and senior management EVERYWHERE you look in this corporatised environment riding on the crest of huge salaries, passing the blame for failures whilst trying to take credit for any successes (and they are few and far between these days).
    I still struggle to find a Ministry or department now that isn’t a total fuckup. @ Martyn – you recently posted re the Met Service – thanks for reminding me.
    I still recall the promises made during the last public service reform.
    We were promised “de-politicisation”, better accountability, efficiency and effectiveness and all the language in fashion at the time.

    Can anybody (PLEASE!!) tell me of a government insitution that isn’t a complete fuckup – and I mean for whatever reason. There are those that are trying – such as those that have a judicial function, but they’re simply nobbled at will by under-funding.
    Then there are those whose Senior and muddle management have allowed themselves to succumb to ministerial whispers, and/or where design was politically motivated in order to implement an agenda. (what the fuck for example does an entity monitoring the quality of structural steel have to do with who we grant visas to, or as to the quality of housing or car boots? – or for that matter, supposedly independent ‘mediation services’).

    I find it interesting (not interesting enough to locate the link however), where Bill English is now trying to justify the relationship between the treatment of whistle blowers and fraudulent activity with the newly appointed Auditor General, by pretending the appointment to be “independent”, with gubbamint at ‘arms length’.

    But then let’s just look at how wonderful the rest of our Ministries and Departments are:
    -Ministry of Education
    -MoBIE – perhaps one of the worst bugger’s muddles
    -MSD – with all its components like WINZ and CYFS and various other acronyms
    -Health
    -MFAT – CHrist! there’s an example of employee moral and non-political interference if ever there was one – second only to MoBIE and MSD

    And then there’s the SOEs (what’s left of them – not that they ever considered themselves to have a public service function) and quangos.
    NZPost/DHL
    KoiwoiRail
    ……….
    ……

    Oh, and before I forget …. MoD

    It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad. The last one I worked in, I used to ask colleagues about things like how they saw themselves in civil society and what their function was. Codes of Conduct, Conflicts of Interest …. etc.
    FUCK ALL had any clue! And the reason they didn’t is because they saw NO difference in where they were/are as opposed to some other FOR PROFIT enterprise they’d worked in

    Needless to say one former CEO is now banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and his successor probably should be on the grounds of incompetence and expecting that his loyal (loyal only by way of disinterest, demotivation, oppression, etc) peons should bust their guts manipulating budgets, KPIs and ‘purchase agreements (FFS!) in order to make him/her look good.

    Oh… and before this /endrave, then there’s our SIS and GCSB and Pleece intelligence and some of their muddle class Heads I grew up with, and who I keep asking myself – “WTF happened to you?”.
    The SIS with its wonderful database FFS.

    I never really liked Greg O’Connor – but maybe that was down to a personal prejudice – or Ron Mark for that matter.
    But I sure as shit hope both get a place in the next parliament and have the balls to keep with their convictions to allow a complete rark up of what we think of as the gubbamint ‘Administration’

    But back to my original question – can anyone tell me of a Munstry of Department that’s not covered in unadulterated expectorant and excrement to some degree? I’m really finding it hard

  6. Put this one down at least partly to cultist ideas about the importance of ‘leadership’. Leaders are ‘special’ and they must be trusted and given the space to ‘lead’.
    This drivel has long infected the private sector and has clearly leapt across species into the public service some time ago.
    Most likely the people who raised questions were described as being ‘resistant to change’ or not having ‘buy-in’ to the exciting changes going on. Or whatever.

  7. “This is unbelievable”

    No Martyn …. it’s not. It’s working as designed – see my comment re the state of our public service (above maybe), and if you can name me an institution that’s fulfilling its purpose in a functioning – supposedly first world democratic Nayshun, please let me know because I’m fucking struggling now to name one that isn’t smeared with politician’s faecal matter.

  8. They will have an enquiry when it suits their agenda to have one but they have so much buried in the back yard and are totally compromised by protecting themselves and their friends that they stand for nothing except their own survival.

    In a possible fourth term they will be totally paralysed, unfit and unable to govern.

  9. From above:
    “The chief executive at the time, Martin Matthews, repeatedly gave Harrison the benefit of the doubt.”

    That is the man that was put in charge of our supposed anti corruption and poor business practice ‘watchdog’ (without much teeth):
    http://www.oag.govt.nz/
    http://www.oag.govt.nz/our-people/martin-matthews

    This is what their Office is supposed to be doing:
    http://www.oag.govt.nz/our-work

    But even under the previous Controller and Auditor General, they did have a dim view of certain “commoner’s” requests for investigating certain matters of grave concern:
    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/the-new-zealand-ombudsman-underfunded-and-compromised-the-auditor-general-sees-no-need-for-action/

    Here is what gave rise to concerns about the for years underfunded, non performing Office of Ombudsmen:

    ‘THE NEW ZEALAND OMBUDSMAN: “FAIRNESS FOR ALL” – AN EMPTY SLOGAN FOR SOME’
    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2016/07/24/the-new-zealand-ombudsman-fairness-for-all-an-empty-slogan-for-some/

    Read through all that stuff, and your eyes will be opened about the performance and commitments of our so-called ‘watchdogs’.

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