Wanted: One race relations commissioner

The shock resignation of Meng Foon has given the government another headache it didn't need.

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Monday, June 19, by Catherine McGregor. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: High school students working through the night to support families; National pitches tougher sentences for gang members; ethnicity now a factor in ranking Auckland surgery waitlists. But first, how a conflict of interest over emergency housing led to Meng Foon’s downfall.

(Meng Foon. Screengrab: Julie Zhu/Steven Chow)

A good time to bury bad news

The announcement that Meng Foon was resigning as race relations commissioner landed on Friday at 4.30pm, a textbook Friday news dump that sent the nation’s half-empty newsrooms scrambling. Making it all the more chaotic was the confusion caused by Foon himself, who initially denied he’d resigned before clarifying that he was planning to do so on Sunday but “the news has beaten me”. Foon stepped down from the Human Rights Commission (HRC) over a failure to properly disclose a conflict of interest over $2 million in government funding, including for emergency housing, that went to a company he directs. Associate justice minister Deborah Russell says the matter was serious enough that Foon would probably have been sacked had he not resigned. 

The hunt for a new commissioner begins

While Russell says it’s “important the public is aware of the circumstances” in which Foon resigned, it’s not yet clear whether the HRC investigation that prompted her to act will be made public. Expect to find out this week, along with information on an expected timeline for the appointment of Foon’s replacement. While the “process and panels” used to appoint commissioners are independent and involve consultation with parliamentary party leaders, the appointment ultimately falls under the remit of the justice minister, currently Kiri Allan. Foon was appointed in 2019, a year after the resignation of his predecessor Dame Susan Devoy. He is famously fluent in te reo Māori, along with Seyip, Cantonese and English. Chief commissioner Paul Hunt said Foon’s resignation was “courageous”, calling him a "man of the people" who had made "an unfortunate mistake".

Conflict of interest allegations beleaguer government

It isn’t the first time questions have been raised over Foon’s financial disclosures. In April it was revealed that Foon donated thousands of dollars to Allan’s election campaign, prior to her becoming a minister. On Friday, Foon said that while he did declare the emergency housing interest before his appointment in 2019, he had erred in not raising it during the HRC inquiry into the sector. But he also said his resignation was the result of being “chucked under the bus”. Coming on the heels of Michael Wood and his airport-share saga, it seems that some figures “associated with or appointed by Labour” have a problem grasping when they have a conflict of interest, says Stuff’s Luke Malpass. They aren’t “crimes of the century and there’s no evidence of any graft,” he writes, “but the accretion of them just gives the whole government – and some of those it appoints – an entitled, arrogant and slightly smelly vibe”.

Nash cleared of more serious wrongdoing

Former cabinet minister Stuart Nash is among those called out by Malpass, though he “at least copped to the fact he did the wrong thing each time”. A report into Nash’s relationship with donors released on Friday found no breaches of the cabinet manual, “other than the ones that had led to his dismissal as a minister”. However the report did find that Nash had been lobbied by donor Phil McCaw requesting an exemption from the IRD’s high-wealth tax study. Following his appointment to a government advisory council, McCaw emailed Nash asking that he be removed from the IRD study “in order for this project to have my full attention”. The request was unsuccessful. 

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High school students working into the wee hours

Sixteen-year-old Jaylin lives in Ōtara, attends Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, and has an after-school job. But it’s not just a pocket money gig – she regularly works well over 20 hours a week, and has worked as much as 35 hours in a school week in the past. She tells Q&A’s Indira Stewart: “I get home at around 11pm from work and then I normally go to sleep at around 1am, sometimes 2am or 3am from doing assessments after work.” The student stories in Stewart’s report are heartbreaking, and help cast a new light on many of those dramatic headlines about record-low attendance rates. “The choice that [students] have in front of them is they need to work to support the income of the family,” says Tāmaki College principal Soana Pamaka. “And our young people are very, very loyal to family. So if it comes down to the choice of school or work, they will work.” The whole story is well worth a watch, or read. 

National proposes tougher sentences for gang members

National will make membership of a gang an aggravating factor during sentencing for a crime, party leader Christopher Luxon has announced. Under current law, the connection between a person’s offending and their “participation in an organised criminal group” is an aggravating factor; National would make gang membership an automatic aggravating factor, regardless of the offence committed. The narrow difference has prompted Labour’s police spokesperson Ginny Andersen to dismiss the policy as “a technical tweak”. National’s proposal follows last week’s Mongrel Mob tangi procession in Ōpotiki which led to school closures and reports of gunfire. But Luxon denied the two were connected: “This has been something that we’ve been talking about for a long time, so please don’t mistake this, this is not about politicising Ōpōtiki at all.”

Ethnicity a factor in ranking Auckland surgery waitlists

A patient’s ethnicity is now among the factors Auckland Hospital must consider when deciding which surgeries to prioritise, the Herald’s Jason Wall and Newshub’s Barry Soper report. The hospital’s equity adjustor score uses an algorithm to prioritise patients according to a number of factors including, since February, their ethnicity. The policy gives priority to Māori and Pacific Island patients, on the grounds that they have historically had unequal access to healthcare. Some surgeons aren’t happy with the policy, with one calling the ranking system “disgusting”. Dr Mike Shepherd of Te Toka Tumai (Te Whatu Ora’s equivalent to the former Auckland DHB) emphasises that ethnicity is not the only element considered in the scoring system, and says it helps ensure that people have equitable outcomes, regardless of their ethnicity or other circumstances. 

Click and collect

• A Stop Co-Governance meeting in Dunedin was closed down by Scouts NZ, which claimed it was misled about the purpose of the meeting.

• A pair of Christchurch philanthropists have launched a publicity campaign to get an estimated $10 billion of wage subsidy overpayments repaid.

• The country’s oldest pub is for sale. 

• A useful Charlie Mitchell analysis of RNZ’s pro-Moscow edits – and why it seems very likely the staffer responsible was a “tankie”, not a Russian plant.

• The strange case of paying to have your book eviscerated at RNZ (yup, them again).

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz.

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Duncan Greive investigates how the continuing fallout from the Kamahl Santamaria scandal could “obliterate” TVNZ’s digital news ambitions. Te Kahuratai Moko-Painting and Tara McAllister explain how the pūtaiao model provides a pathway for decolonising science. Who shot the last huia? Kathryn van Beek is a little worried it was her uncle. Charlotte Muru-Lanning finds out how Tanuki’s Cave has stayed in business for 26 years. And The Spinoff writers pick their 10 best TV shows of the year so far.

Sporting snippets

• Five newcomers – two Chiefs, two Crusaders and a Hurricane – have been named to the All Blacks squad for the Rugby Championship.

• Team New Zealand beat defending champions Australia in the opening regatta of the Sail GP on Lake Michigan.

The high-flying former law student with a ‘terrible lying problem’

Think Inventing Anna crossed with George Santos, crossed with Legally Blonde, and you have the story of Corallee Collins-Annan, the alleged fraudster and serial fabulist investigated by the Sunday Star-Times’ Steve Kilgallon. She grew up in Hawke’s Bay and is now living in Boston, but the bulk of her problematic behaviour took place in Auckland, specifically at AUT law school’s mock trial club, where tens of thousands of dollars disappeared during Collins-Annan’s time in charge.

The climax of the story comes when Collins-Annan appears to admit everything – though colour me sceptical that she’s really a Harvard student, as she continues to claim.