Saga reveals alarming holes

The case of former auditor-general Martin Matthews is an excruciating one. It’s significant because it cuts across several of the most important trends of our time: justice, independence, accountability, and the role of a responsible media. All of these things are crucial to a healthy democracy, but they don’t necessarily function easily alongside each other.

The independence of positions such as that of the auditor-general is crucial. This person is responsible for scrutinising public spending, which, as Matthews’ lawyer put it, gives them an extraordinary ability to annoy the government.

For that reason, the position is responsible to Parliament as a whole, rather than just the government. Governments can easily hire and fire, not parliaments driven by partisan disagreement.

It’s also why the revelations published by Stuff this week are so alarming. It appears the very constitutional safeguards that were intended to protect auditors-general were used to depose Matthews. It proves that, when push comes to shove, auditors-general aren’t really very protected from the people they’re meant to monitor.

There are also multiple questions of accountability: in Matthews’ case, how much accountability, and to whom he should be held to account.

The accountability of the public service has been called into question several times in the course of this parliamentary term. Bernard Hickey pointedly wrote in the wake of Treasury’s Budget hack that calls for secretary Gabriel Makhlouf’s head were premature. ‘‘Our political metabolic rate is way, way too fast,’’ he wrote. It seems like each story about a public service cock-up is accompanied by a call for someone’s head, no matter the crime.

There’s a strong argument to be made for showing more reservation when it comes to resignation calls. We need to hold the civil service to account, but constantly baying for blood encourages ministries to look inwards, to cower and cover up mistakes, rather than to proactively report them for others to learn from.

A more difficult question is how people like Matthews are held to account and who does so. It’s clear that, at the time of his resignation, Matthews had lost the confidence of politicians and the public at large. Some of the reasons for this loss should be re-examined. The whistleblower report, for example, has been widely misreported.

But it is also crucial for ministers and the public to have confidence in their civil service. Sir Maarten Wevers, author of the highly critical report into Matthews’ actions at the Ministry of Transport, understands this all too well.

Wevers cited then-Earthquake Commission minister Megan Woods’ loss of confidence in the commission’s board or staff as one of the reasons for his resignation back in 2018.

But there is a different level of accountability for officers of Parliament. These are watchdogs. It’s crucial that a public loss of confidence should not be enough to depose one. As a watchdog and investigator, the auditor-general’s independence and the importance of ‘‘confidence’’ to the role is probably more akin to that of a judge than a senior civil servant. A judge must feel safe to make decisions that risk angering the public.

Superior court judges are protected from public outrage by the Judicial Conduct Panel, which decides whether or not to recommend a judge be removed. It is staffed by experts and is immune from public opinion. The auditor-general is not accountable to public sentiment, nor should that person be. Nor are they responsible to the feelings of the media. It is our job to be judicious, not judicial.

But nobody is accountable to no-one. The Matthews scandal has exposed the inadequacy of Parliament’s Officers of Parliament Committee to monitor effectively the three roles it appoints.

When the cameras are off, politicians of all parties regularly work sensibly and co-operatively to keep the country running. But politicians’ first loyalty is to the public (as it should be) and politics is messy. The ugly truth is that (up to a point) ends sometimes justify means. Process can be twisted, rules bent and even broken, all in the service of a higher goal.

This usually isn’t a problem. There are safeguards in place to curb the worst excesses and sometimes rules need to be bent just to get things done. But this also leaves people unbelievably vulnerable when politicians start to exercise a judicial role. MPs on the verge of an election are especially vulnerable to the vicissitudes of public opinion. In this case, justice by politicians appears to be little better than justice by the mob.

The Matthews affair has exposed the inadequacy of Parliament when it comes to monitoring its own officers, and therefore the need for a proper body that can fairly hold watchdogs to account without bowing in any way to public pressure.