Nerd Saturday: An interest in conflict

She was willing her tears back down, but they ebbed into her voice. She explained herself again - again - as the journos held their microphones to her, as her colleagues milled past on their way to the debating chamber. Rawiri Waititi, not even from her own party, stopped to touch her shoulder.

It can be hard to know what Nanaia Mahuta stands accused of. Sometimes the racism is naked. Other times, it’s clothed in Three Waters conspiracy theories - coming from people so bizarre they think functioning infrastructure is for communists, and they’d rather drink sheep shit in the name of freedom. But I digress.

This time, the allegation is a conflict of interest. Mahuta herself has asked that the allegations be investigated.

Conflict of interest? The way this phrase is being used sounds incredibly sinister, like it means ‘corruption’. I can’t say enough: it doesn’t. I’ve had conflicts of interest. So has almost everyone who’s worked in or for the government.

So what’s going on? Let’s back up the hysteria truck.

What even is a conflict of interest?

I promise to make this bit as non-boring as I can. I should say, I don’t know Mahuta from a bar of soap. I can’t say if her mahi as a Minister is good, bad or indifferent. Above all, I don’t know the details of this particular case. So I’ll talk about the wider issues, using careful words.

Long documents have been written, but it comes down to this: a conflict of interest is a tension between somebody’s job and some other part of their life. That’s all. Conflicts of interest aren’t inherently bad, and they certainly don’t mean someone’s dishonest. They just need to be managed.

There are three kinds of conflict of interest. Let’s work them through quickly, using me as an example.

1. A perceived conflict of interest.I used to be on the board of an NGO that provided emergency housing. At the same time, I was working for a government agency with a teeny tiny role in housing. There wasn’t a conflict of interest - but even so, someone, possibly, could have thought it was off beam. They might have questioned the agency’s integrity. I dealt with this situation by simply telling my boss.
2. A potential conflict of interest.What if things had been slightly different? What if my government job had changed focus, and I’d been asked to work on housing issues directly? That might have meant I’d become involved in decisions to fund NGOs. I would have needed a transparent plan with my boss, in case this scenario became real.
3. An actual conflict of interest.Now imagine that potential conflict had played out. I would have been wearing two hats: asking for money with my NGO board hat, and giving out money with my government hat. You could say, I’d be in a position to give my mates money. There’d be different ways my boss and I could’ve manage this conflict, from me stepping aside from particular funding decisions, right through to me resigning from the board.

OK, my real life examples aren’t exciting. You want excitement, then find a different nerd, b*tches. But you can easily see where unmanaged conflicts of interest might go: worst case scenario, people abusing their positions for power or money. Conflicts of interest may not be bad in and of themselves, but they have to be handled rigorously.

If only we had a very sensible, well known, easily accessible, extensively documented, tried and true way of managing conflicts of interest. OH HANG ON, WAIT A MINUTE.

Who does what?

This bit might seem a little pedantic: let’s keep it brief.

Like I said upfront, it’s difficult to know what Mahuta is accused of. The implication is that there’s a set of rules for everyone, and Mahuta and her family have flouted them. Again, I don’t know the ins and outs - but here’s what the news tells me.

Members of her whānau were appointed to a waste management working group, in an area of government Mahuta has no responsibility. The conflict of interest procedures appear to have been closely followed. Mahuta’s husband owns a business that was awarded contracts with different government agencies. Again, it seems procedures were followed. Those procedures involved both Ministers themselves, and the government agency officials who work for them.

This is where things get super murky. Again, I’ll sidestep this particular case, and I’ll make some general comments.

Ministers can appoint people onto working groups (although this time, they didn’t). Ministers don’t award government contracts: their agencies do. There are rules around both kinds of processes, to - drumroll - manage conflicts of interest. A Minister would have to work pretty bloody hard to influence a process that, by design, excludes them. Aotearoa is known for high integrity levels, and that includes managing conflicts of interest. This doesn’t mean we can relax, or that we don’t make mistakes, sometimes bad ones. Still, we must be doing something right.

So: what are we actually debating here? So far as I can see, dishonesty isn’t alleged by anyone credible. More than that, I haven’t seen anyone name a specific rule that’s been broken, by the Minister or a government agency, through either conspiracy or cock-up. It seems we’re talking about a perceived conflict of interest - still important, but by definition, something in the eye of the beholder. More on this soon.

Rigorous is good - but being too tough on conflicts of interest could bite us on the bum.

Heated words were exchanged in the debating chamber this week. When the opposition challenged Mahuta, her colleague shot a question back, about Bill English. When English was Minister of Finance, his brother was appointed as advisor to the Reserve Bank. No one looked twice. You can see where this is going.

You might ask, should family members of Ministers be unable to hold these kinds of positions? Sometimes, that might be the right way to manage a conflict of interest - but as a blanket rule, hell no.

On a personal level, it’s potentially unfair. Imagine being the wife or sister of the man in the top job. Maybe you’re qualified, experienced, hardworking; want to make the world a better place. But he got to the top first, and now the rules have shut you out.

On a societal level, there are downsides too. Mahuta’s family were appointed to the working group on waste management to bring a mātaraunga perspective. Probably, they’re among a very small group with the right expertise - and there were always good odds, because Aotearoa is small, that these experts would be related. They bring knowledge we need, desperately. I don’t need to remind you: unless we care for Papatūānuku urgently, we’re f*cked. All of us.

The thing we’re arguing about is not really the thing we’re arguing about

‘Conflict of interest’. Three nondescript words, combined into a sterile phrase: forms to be completed, procedures to be followed. Still, these words, this phrase, invoke feelings.

Conflicts of interest are awkward. Sometimes they shine a light on relationships of power; on the intricacies of power’s networks. That’s the point. And power accrues. We are not the egalitarian society we imagine. Power is complex, with plenty of dimensions, but it often shares last names. If that makes us uncomfortable, maybe it should.

Some rail against Mahuta for breaking unspecified rules. She did, but as best as I can tell, it’s not the rules they think.

We admire entrepreneurialism. We like a bit of get up and go; cheer on the ones who will pull themselves up by the bootstraps, haul themselves out of bed for an early start, figure out what it is they’ve got to sell. It’s called making a buck under capitalism, and it may produce unequal outcomes, but we don’t mind so much when white people do it. It’s those others we resent.

When mud is thrown, it sticks to some more than others. The mud throwers know it. The ones to whom the mud clings know it even better.

My intuition could be wrong: events to come could make a fool of me. Like I said, I don’t know the details. All I know is, we have a set of rules. Maybe they’re fair, or maybe they’re not. But we need to apply those rules the same way to everyone. Somehow, that’s a thing the ‘one rule for all’ crowd are the first to forget.

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