Ben McNulty: Wellington deputy mayor on the calls for tougher sanctions on misbehaving councillors

Wellington's deputy mayor is floating a law change to give councils more teeth for dealing with badly behaved representatives. 
 
Ben McNulty's highlighted Dunedin City Council's stand off with suspended councillor Benedict Ong, who's being investigated over allegations he shared confidential information. 

McNulty says some things done within councils would get people booted from the private sector. 

He says a variety of punishments could be considered.  

"It's something like being able to dock pay, being able to suspend them from attending council meetings."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now let's have a chat about badly behaving counselors. Wellington's
Deputy mayor wants more power to deal with these counselors.
He's pointed to the case of the Dunedin City councilor
Benedict ONNG, who repeatedly leaks information, and Ben McNulty of
Wellington says this creates almost existential threats to democracy. Bends
with us now, Hi, Ben good evening, Heather, what powers
do you want? Like, what do you want to be

(00:21):
able to do to someone like Benedict?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
But at the moment, hither the problem is that short
of committing a criminal offense that puts you into prison
for two years away, the powers that are in the
current model are wetbus tickets essentially. So a range of
things is what I've floated. You might want to look
at something like being able to doc pay, being able
to suspend them from attending council meetings. In the absolute extreme,
and I'm not saying benaduct hung has passed us pay yet,

(00:46):
but in the accident extreme, you may want to look
at where the councilors have the ability to remove someone
from a council through a substantive majority vote. But those
are the kinds of tools on the table that as
we're going for amalgamation, the government's legislating at the moment,
we should ever think about, well, what makes democracy work
so that you can hold your public officials to account?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Okay, how badly behaved would you have to be to
be removed from council?

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I would argue, if you do something in the criminal
space that gets you time in prison, you've probably made
a compelling case to at least consider it. It's a
high bar, right, it has to be a high bar.
This is democracy. People have put you into office for
really good reason. But at the moment, someone could commit
an assault, a sexual kind of crime, anything like that,
and if it's less than two years, they remain as

(01:33):
you're elected. It's cool. I just don't think it quite right.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Fair enough on the crime front. So we just drop that,
We drop that bar right down where it. We say
there's any kind of incarceration, you're off council.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Okay, what else? What other censures do you think are necessary?
It would be in the case of leaking information that
you would dock the path.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, this is the case that there are behaviors that
if you did in the private sector, you'd be out
on your backside right away. For instance, in this council,
in the previous training, I've been around long enough to
see some of the worst applications of behavior. When we
were looking at negotiating the sludge plant as council, we
had to sign off on what our price range was.
We were willing to do two hundred and three hundred MILI.

(02:14):
That information was leaked into public domain immediately the private
sector knew our willingness to pay was at the three
hundred million end. Boom. Rate payers can't give that prison
for anything less than three hundred million. I can't say
heither was somebody on counsel someone on council was my understanding.
So that.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Sounds a little here. Say, are you sure that somebody
on council leaked it? Yes, Okay, who was it?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Then? I'm not going to say on this one. That's
bringing up old things in the past. But what I'm
saying is if you did it in a private sector role, well,
I would have no clue. But if you did that
in a private sector role, Heather, you'd be fired. The
thing is public accountability, LIOL.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
But I understand that and I don't like that either,
that that happened because basically it would have blown open
the ability to negotiate. There was no longer available to
the council. But it's an elected counselor. You can't just
take away people who are elected.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
It's democracy, no, And that's why I'm talking about. If
you're going to talk about removal, that has to be
an incredibly high bar, which I'm saying would be in
the criminal But there's a whole golf of things that
we don't have in there. When code of conducts have
happened at before you know, the reading Code of Conduct,
it was weaponized and the last ten the mayor's appoint
that process. So whether you have an independent standards body
and they're the ones that manage these kinds of incidents,

(03:27):
there's a whole sort of golf is what I'm talking about,
of gray area of space where right now the mayor
has a wetbus ticket or you commit.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
But as it should be, then as it should be.
Because as much as I don't like the behavior of
Ray Jung or Benedict Dong, the fact is the mayor
is just elected like Ray is elected, like Benedict is elected,
and the mayor should not be able to dock the
pay of an elected member.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
What do you think about a recall election, though, soul
should because then this is the spectrum of things, right.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, no, no difference the different I love you idea, but
the difference is where the our lies. Right, So you've
got to put the power in the hands of the people,
of the voters. You can't put the power in the
hands of other counselors who can weaponize that power against
their council enemies.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
No, that's a totally fair thing. And again that's why
I get back to this really high bar. I mean,
I don't you know, I'm not just fixating on the
ability that you can remove a single counselor for a
voting that's the answer to everything I'm talking about arrange here,
but something like a recall election that puts things into
the public The key thing is the government wants to
improve local government in New Zealand. That's why we're doing
this amalgamation. So while you're going through that, why wouldn't

(04:31):
you have a discussion about, well, how can you actually
improve local government in terms of making it better for
public being able to hold people in account and the
recall election could be part of that into Bennett Stanard's
body docing pay But you've got right, this could be
powers that could be weaponized. You'd hope if you're weaponized,
that has electoral consequences when it comes to election time.
But it's a balance. I don't walk away from that
for a second.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
All Right, Ben, thanks for talking us through to appreciating
Ben McNulty, Wellington Deputy Mayor.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
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