Apologies in order
Mail coverage of Cr Rutledge’s peccadillo has been fascinating – especially when it’s remembered how reported comments by Crs Acland and McGurk, made back in May after they’d scuttled to the Mail to protest Rutledge’s ‘‘conduct’’, were found to be wrong. Acland and McGurk’s action impacted even more damagingly – it undermined last year’s LongTerm-Plan deliberations.
The independent investigator’s report held Cr Rutledge to be responsible for only a small part of what his accusers had attempted to portray. That Crs Acland and McGurk – and later, Crs Lawrey, Fulton and Courtney – in blatant disregard for council’s long-established Code of Conduct process, sought to engineer publicity from what was entirely an internal council matter, surely means at the very least that each one now owes grovelling apologies. First, to Cr Rutledge and his wife, Meg, for the undeserved ignominy those councillors caused to be heaped upon them – and second, to the people of Nelson, for thrusting our council into disrepute, both locally and nationally.