How the spin machine works
It’s amazing how much time and effort went in to telling me nothing.
Thirty-six emails to 14 different people across two local government organisations over four days and at the end of it – no response. In between was a day of email silence, during which a vital piece of information mysteriously disappeared from the draft response.
At 10.13am on Tuesday, July 9, I asked Bay of Plenty Regional Council about its involvement with the planned managed retreat to get residents to move from a debris flow zone at Matata¯ .
The $15m cost of buying out the residents was intended to be split between the government and the district and regional councils. Among other questions, I wanted to confirm residents’ reports that the regional council had agreed in principle to pay its share.
I knew the Government was expected to announce its contribution the following week, but that should not have stopped the regional council confirming its inprinciple decision.
But communications released under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act show my question triggered a four-day email trail which eventually went cold at 1.25pm on Friday, July 12 – with no explanation and a draft response still unsent.
The 45 pages of emails – helpfully sent as black and white scanned pdfs so as to render meaningless comments such as ‘‘note yellow highlight’’ – give a glimpse into the local government spin machine.
At 11.45am on the Tuesday, Bay of Plenty Regional Council communications person Katrina Knill began asking staff for information to draft a response.
The regional council’s chief executive, Fiona McTavish, then forwarded my request to Whakatane District Council chief executive Steph O’Sullivan, with the message ‘‘Incoming’’.
At 1.56pm O’Sullivan told her communications manager, Alexandra Pickles: ‘‘We need to try & manage these down if we can. We cannot mix climate change & natural hazard issues.’’ The sentence that followed was redacted.
About 90 minutes later, O’Sullivan sent Pickles another worried email: ‘‘Although this story has been in the wings, we are concerned about its timing & potential unintended consequences now.’’
Meanwhile, at 2.57pm, Bay of Plenty Regional Council corporate programme manager Mark Le Comte told Knill the inprinciple agreement to a three-way split had been confirmed to a member of the public, ‘‘so there should be no harm in using similar wording’’.
At 3.54pm, McTavish also emailed Knill, reiterating that the council’s inprinciple funding commitment was in the public domain.
So by 4pm on Tuesday, Knill had a clear answer to the funding question. But that information never made it to the final response, which also never made it to me.
In an email at 4.07pm, Knill noted that, while the district council was the main player ‘‘we still have a responsibility to answer questions that relate directly to our decisions, responsibilities and work’’.
The discussions and to-and-fro emails continued between 14 staff at both councils. And somewhere between the draft response suggested in email number 27, at 2.45pm on Wednesday, and a revised version sent at 10.25am on Friday, a public fact suddenly became confidential.
The original: ‘‘Bay of Plenty Regional Council has expressed support in principle for a three-way share arrangement with Whakata¯ ne District Council and Central Government, pending the outcome of proposed changes to the Regional Natural Resources Plan that were requested by Whakata¯ ne District Council and publicly notified in June last year. Regional Council funding would need to be confirmed through formal budget processes.’’
The new: ‘‘Regional Council discussed matters relating to Awatarariki Fanhead Managed Retreat in confidence on 21 March 2019 (item 10.5), that item has not yet been released to public. We are reviewing what, if any, associated documents can be released to the public and expect to be able to share those with you later next week.’’
In the Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s email release there are no emails for all of Thursday. The response version sent by Knill at 2.45pm on Wednesday, which was sent to Whakatane District Council’s Alexandra Pickles, is accompanied by a message saying Knill had cleared the response at her end. So who demanded that change and why – and where is the record of those conversations?
When I asked Whakatane District Council for its email correspondence, two missing messages miraculously appeared. The first was from the regional council’s boss Fiona McTavish to Knill, at 6.39pm on the Wednesday: ‘‘Talking with Steph now and she has asked for the following sentence [to] be removed: Regional Council funding would need to be confirmed through formal budget processes,’’ McTavish wrote.
So we know the two council bosses discussed the response offline. Knill’s message to Pickles the following day, which forwarded McTavish’s comments, also failed to appear in the regional council’s LGOIMA release.
The email to-ing and fro-ing continued, and at 1.25pm on Friday (more than two days after my stated deadline and 15 hours after I’d filed the story) Knill emailed regional council integrated planning manager David Phizacklea with the finalised response, which she planned to ‘‘send to the journo after I’ve been to lunch’’. Only she never did send it.
When I asked the following Monday why I never received a response, she sent the agreed final draft. Half an hour later I pointed out it still did not confirm whether the council had committed to part-fund the retreat package.
I finally got a reply two days later, at 8.23am on Wednesday, the day after the Government had confirmed the three-way split. It said exactly the same thing as the response she’d prepared eight days earlier.