Not to seem ungrateful . . .

If the Invercargill City Council wants to be thorough about the formation of policy giving and receiving gifts then we might ask them to redouble their efforts to account for the 1980s Hobart wall hanging.

It was a civic gift presented when a delegation from Invercargill’s at-the-time sister city came to town, and its Lord Mayor Doone Kennedy presented the council with what both parties agreed was a wall hanging.

That’s something – and let’s be clear about this – definable as large decorative piece of fabric or other material hung on the wall of a room.

Now those were straightened times for both councils and the gift was one that the most hardnosed public watchdog would struggle to call extravagant.

In fact there was something else this newspaper was struggling not to call it.

A teatowel.

Mayor Eve Poole and city manager Richard King accepted it graciously of course.

Some time later, in a spasm of journalistic diligence, we inquired of the council where, exactly, the wall hanging was hanging.

Not necessarily in the Civic Theatre or council chambers. But perhaps something less formal. A cafeterial setting, perhaps?

The question was never answered to our satisfaction and a few tentative prods since then haven’t resolved the matter.

Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt has been a tad passive-aggressive in his comments about the Government’s wish for councils such as his to formulate something rather formal by way of a gifts policy.

He says it’s not something, in all his years as New Zealand’s now longest-serving mayor, that has occasioned a single complaint, but if Parliament insists ‘‘the council should spend time and money developing a policy’’, he’ll do his very best to obey the law.

Good. The law prefers it when people do that. And there’s much to commend clarity of rules. Looking a gift horse in the mouth can be a good idea. More than that – and we don’t mean to be unkind – when public money is involved it’s a good idea to look into both ends of the horse.

You would think that the time and money involved formulating a policy wouldn’t be all that great. Surely, for the sake of uniform standards, templated policies could apply nationwide.

The difficulty there might be the different tolerances of different communities for differently sized gifts. John Key, on behalf of the nation, accepted Nandi the elephant as a gift from Sri Lanka. Something of that scale and vibrancy isn’t likely to come Shadbolt’s way any time soon, and most of us would say that’s a good thing, but perhaps we should accept that comfort levels of Auckland ratepayers for what constitutes an acceptable gift to give, or receive, might differ from Southlanders.

Then again, if they were actually given a say, maybe they wouldn’t.

Shadbolt also makes the valid point that just as some are the gifts keep on giving, other gifts start taking after a while.

He points to the likes of the much-enjoyed Anderson Park and its house, or the Corbet lights (that original gift was actually financial and the decision to spend it on festive lighting was made within the council) have in time become expenses for council, for maintenance and/or replacement reasons. Fair enough. Generosities are to be valued, but so is an element of civic caution.

‘‘Looking a gift horse in the mouth can be a good idea.’’