Julie Haggie: Transparency International NZ executive director on the Auckland VTNZ bribery scandal

More than 300 people are being made to re-sit their practical driving test - following fraud allegations at an Auckland VTNZ.

Police and NZTA are looking into claims testing officers at the Highbrook branch took money in return for passing applicants, over several years.  

Five officers have been sacked for misconduct - and the branch has stopped offering tests in the meantime.

Transparency International NZ executive director Julie Haggie says they need to figure out how this was possible.

"Behaviour and the training and the culture that was existing and whether any of those things had an impact on people feeling like - I can get away with it. And they have felt like they can get away with it and make profit out of it."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are concerns that that bribery scandal at the Auckland
VT and Z could reveal wider issues. Investigators have found
testing officers were accepting payments to pass practical exams, which
resulted in over three hundred people having to retake their
licenses and five staff being sacked. Now, Julie Haggee is
Transparency Internationals Executive direct down with us. Now, how Julie,

(00:20):
hi there? Are you surprised by this or is this
the kind of thing that you already expected was happening
out there.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
We've already seen a couple of cases. There's one back
in twenty eighteen exactly the same kind of seat but
with AA. So we have seen that, and we've seen
other types of licensing. This is a lot of areas
where licensing transfers down from a government through a law
to a government department, then out to a private company
or whatever, or a professional and so you have seen

(00:48):
instances of cases going building inspections, other professional types of licensing.
So it's not unusual. What you want to know, There's
two things. There's fairness, transparency and the safety. Isn't there
really the coolness core elements of it? So you want
to know that the agency responsible for doing the contracting out,

(01:11):
which is or they're doing the license providing the license,
which is n Z t A I presume has got
sufficient systems to be able to monitor they put in
place some expectations with the with the licensing agent of
ETNZ in this case r A, and that they've then
that they're checking that and they've got checking mechanisms and
that that then then the licensing the agents is doing

(01:33):
the same and you know, and so on, so that
that that gives you some confidence that you're not putting
people who are incapable of driving, you know, two thousand
kilogram piece of metal kilometers an hour on the motorway.
I mean, it is a there is a safety and
risk issue in this one. It's quite serious as well
as the fairness is everybody else sitting their licenses wants

(01:56):
has to do it, and they want to know that
that that nobody else is getting off cheaply or unfairly.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Like those have come to light. If it's been going
on for years undetected, how do you suddenly detect.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
It be interesting to see because I mean I hasn't
I mean, just just a note there's been allegations of
bribery and people have been laid off, so I'm presuming
there might be a police investigation to follow them, and
then I would hope something like the Order to General
might have a look at the processes that occur between
those organizations to make sure that there's proper there's proper

(02:30):
revelation of these things happening. But we don't know. It
could have been a whistleblower, it could have been an
odd thing coming up, could have been somebody dubbed them in,
So you don't know, and something like that where it's
a one to one unless you've got some chicking mechanism
like you might have, whether they've got numbers of unusual
license behavior, you might have that, or you might have

(02:51):
you might have a conflict of interest decorations that they'd
be interesting to see if they did that, because you know,
that's an area that seems to have seems to be
an allegation of clue in this case, as there was
in the twenty eighteen case as well, And so you
wonder about the behavior and the training and the culture
that was existing and whether any of those things had

(03:11):
an impact on people feeling like I can get away
with it and they have felt they've got they could
get away with and make profit out of it. So
that's what it seems to it allegations, but that's what
it seems to be the case.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Do you believe that's the Do you believe our global
ranking which puts US at fourth for anti corruption.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yet, well, it does put us at forth for anti
corruption and that's because compared compared to other countries, there's
a lot of good things going on in New Zealand
that aren't going on in other countries. It is it
is largely about public sector and political integrity that corruption
perceptions index, not about the private sector. So that that
is one thing. We do have corruption in New Zealand

(03:52):
just like everyone else has, and we're slipping and these
systems of integrity are what pull you back and get
you higher up. So this is another evident, another sort
of example of where systems that should be traveling down
the chain just as an integrity you know, the expectations
of correct behavior, the checking, the monitoring, the investigations when

(04:13):
they cure good whistleblowing processes, are they in place, because
if they're not further down the chain, then that's just
going to further erode people's trust in the whole system.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Very good point. Hey, thank you very much, Julie. Julie Haggie,
Transparency International's executive director here in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
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