Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talk SEDB.
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Speaker 2: is Politics Central at twenty two past three and we'll
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Speaker 2: until we're taking your calls in just a moment. But first,
Speaker 2: The Helen Clark Foundation is calling for tougher rules against
Speaker 2: corruption after a report authored by Philip Yasbeck outlined the
Speaker 2: levels of transparency in our government. The report says that
Speaker 2: kiwis and naive and thinking New Zealand is safe from
Speaker 2: corruption scene overseas. And to discuss the report, doctor Bryce Edwards,
Speaker 2: he's political commentator from Victoria University, joins me. Now, Bryce,
Speaker 2: good afternoon.
Speaker 3: Hi Tim.
Speaker 2: Have you read the report?
Speaker 3: I have, And you know I'm pretty intericipied this. There's
Speaker 3: nothing part cleanly new in it. This isn't new research,
Speaker 3: but it's bringing together a lot of the existing materials
Speaker 3: and putting a really compelling case for why the system
Speaker 3: isn't working very well at the moment and what we
Speaker 3: could do to improve it and bring about more transparency,
Speaker 3: to be specific.
Speaker 2: And it's about the perception of corruption, isn't it rather
Speaker 2: than the reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's because it's hard to witch and measure
Speaker 3: corruption by its very nature, corruption is you know, what
Speaker 3: happens behind the scenes and people are trying to hide it.
Speaker 3: So I mean, you can in some countries measure it
Speaker 3: by how many people get convicted or charged with corruption,
Speaker 3: but that is, you know, is kind of problematic because
Speaker 3: most people get away with it.
Speaker 2: It is quite a dramatic sort of headline. But I
Speaker 2: looked at the international sort of rankings and we're ranked
Speaker 2: number third for sort of cleanliness out of one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty countries. We've got Denmark, Finland, Norway and Singapore.
Speaker 2: Is this report and danger of over egging it?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at the annual Corruption Perception
Speaker 3: Index that you're just talking about, it's shown New Zealand slipping,
Speaker 3: and not just in the rankings, but in our score
Speaker 3: that we get each year. And so we're headed in
Speaker 3: the wrong direction. And you know, this is a challenge
Speaker 3: around the world at the moment. There's growing concerns around
Speaker 3: the influence of wealthy interests, etc. So you know, and
Speaker 3: one of the problems is that you can be complacent.
Speaker 3: So those countries that have the good scores sometimes end
Speaker 3: up resting on their laurels and they start believing their
Speaker 3: own publicity that you know, nothing can be done wrong
Speaker 3: in this country. You know, politicians are all trustworthy, but
Speaker 3: we start to see, you know, across the board, all
Speaker 3: sides of politics, there are some bending of the rules,
Speaker 3: there are some untoward things that get done, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's important to have a reminder from this
Speaker 3: report that you need to have a keep a close
Speaker 3: watch on.
Speaker 2: This sort of keep ahead of the game. What is
Speaker 2: the what time period does the report cover because we've
Speaker 2: got a obviously we have a national New Zealand first
Speaker 2: at coalition. Does it cover any of that or is
Speaker 2: it the last few years or the last ten or
Speaker 2: twenty years? Does it sort of.
Speaker 3: It's really looking at contemporary as in the last few decades,
Speaker 3: so it's not pointing the finger at any particular government.
Speaker 3: It's certainly not about the current administration. It's and in
Speaker 3: some ways the report is very moderate and it doesn't
Speaker 3: rarely say there's any particular politicians that you know it
Speaker 3: tails off or anything. It's saying, it's about the rules.
Speaker 3: It's about the laws that it's critiquing, So I think
Speaker 3: they've been over backwards to try not to esteem any politicians.
Speaker 2: Is there any difference between corruption within political institutions and
Speaker 2: people who are in political positions like ministers, et cetera
Speaker 2: versus the public service? Is it?
Speaker 3: How?
Speaker 2: You know, how broadly does the does the idea of
Speaker 2: political correction correction comenta.
Speaker 3: Look, that's a great question, and scholars don't rarely succeed
Speaker 3: it as a different type of corruption because they're all
Speaker 3: part of public life and they all hold authority that
Speaker 3: is mandated by the public. Essentially, regardless of whether you
Speaker 3: are heading a government department or you're an elected member
Speaker 3: of the government, it's you know, it's in the public
Speaker 3: sphere and you're you know, if you're misusing resources, you're
Speaker 3: misusing resources, regardless of of your position.
Speaker 2: The report talks about five areas of risk political lobbying,
Speaker 2: donations and funding for elections, access to official information, foreign bribery,
Speaker 2: and beneficial beneficial ownership of corporate entities. What's the one that, intuitively,
Speaker 2: I for you, stands out the most or even just
Speaker 2: based on what your your observations of the political establishments are.
Speaker 3: Look, I've spent a lot of time over the last
Speaker 3: couple of decades looking at donations and lobbying, and I
Speaker 3: think donations don't give enough scrutiny in this country. But
Speaker 3: I've become much more concerned about lobbying. I think that's
Speaker 3: where those with what we interests, if you like what
Speaker 3: the individual's businesses, or even here in go's or trade unions,
Speaker 3: that's where the influencers. The size of money is a problem,
Speaker 3: but it's not certainly not by comparison with other countries.
Speaker 3: It's not that much out of control, whereas it's the
Speaker 3: lobby and that New Zealand has actually no rules about it,
Speaker 3: and so we're out of step with the rest of
Speaker 3: the world. And that if you are working for the beehives,
Speaker 3: you can leave your job and become a lobbyist the
Speaker 3: next day and there's no rules about it. And in fact,
Speaker 3: four out of the last five chiefs of staff in
Speaker 3: the last Labor government where either lobbyists before or after
Speaker 3: they were running the beehives. And it does produce a
Speaker 3: lot of conflicts of interest, and there's no rules about that.
Speaker 2: I guess it doesn't sound flash on the surface, but
Speaker 2: then again, minister's diaries are readily accessible, aren't they in
Speaker 2: terms of who's meeting with home isn't Isn't that a
Speaker 2: big Isn't that a big, a big deal in terms
Speaker 2: of mitigating that stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so, and it's it's one of the
Speaker 3: best things that the last government did in this area
Speaker 3: is start to publish the meetings that the ministers are having.
Speaker 3: This in my view, there's all some questions about how
Speaker 3: robust that mechanism is, but yeah, it's definitely been helpful.
Speaker 3: But in other countries it's a lot more detailed, especially
Speaker 3: when it comes to when they're meet with lobbyists. We
Speaker 3: don't really get a lot of detail. And as we saw,
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of months ago, with Shane Jones
Speaker 3: being found out to have you know, dinners on the
Speaker 3: West Coast with mining bosses. You know, that was missed
Speaker 3: out from the ministeri or diaries. So I think we
Speaker 3: have to be careful not to rest on our lirels
Speaker 3: with those ministerial diaries. Either.
Speaker 2: Do you think in particular is this do you think
Speaker 2: the report just look, let's just keep an eye on this,
Speaker 2: or do you think that there's I mean it does
Speaker 2: suggest that there's been opportunities for governments to do something
Speaker 2: legislatively with this, which is probably easier said than done,
Speaker 2: but that hasn't been done. What do you think, what
Speaker 2: action do you think should be taken?
Speaker 3: Well, there's like twenty seven big recommendations from this report,
Speaker 3: and you know we all have our own views on
Speaker 3: the correctness of those individual ones. I just think there
Speaker 3: should be a debate about we need to have not
Speaker 3: just politicians but the public looking at those things and
Speaker 3: weighing them up, because all those recommendations have proms and
Speaker 3: cons But the problem is that the politicians, I think
Speaker 3: will want to ignore this report. I want to avoid
Speaker 3: it because you know, politicians are like two keys. They
Speaker 3: don't want to vote for an early Christmas.
Speaker 2: Well because their next job could be as a lobbyist.
Speaker 2: I guess because Christopher fin Lesson wants a stand down period,
Speaker 2: what would you suggest, I mean a stand down period
Speaker 2: of what a year? Six months?
Speaker 3: There is in different countries, but yeah, I think a
Speaker 3: year would be the minimum that you'd want that you
Speaker 3: shouldn't be able to go from being prime minister or
Speaker 3: running the beehive. There's a chief of staff to then
Speaker 3: working for lobbyists dealing with the exact same policy issues,
Speaker 3: but for a vested interest on the other side of
Speaker 3: the fence. So yeah, I agree with Chris from Mason
Speaker 3: that's an urgent one.
Speaker 2: Which country do you think is nailing it when it
Speaker 2: comes to really doing a brilliant job and where we
Speaker 2: could just go for the easy answer and say it's
Speaker 2: the one who's number one in the corruption index for
Speaker 2: sort of transparency and all that. But who do you
Speaker 2: think we should take a leaf out of.
Speaker 3: I think Ireland's doing some really important reforms in this area,
Speaker 3: and I think they probably lead the way in terms
Speaker 3: of at least tightening up on lobbying and having some registers,
Speaker 3: because I mean, if the country is different and they
Speaker 3: have different sort of mix, whereas Ireland. Now, look it's
Speaker 3: a similar size country to US, it has a relatively
Speaker 3: similar sort of party system and political system. But I
Speaker 3: mean you look at somewhere like the United States, and
Speaker 3: what's quite interesting that the United States is they have
Speaker 3: some of the tightest regulations in this regard. So I'm
Speaker 3: not saying we should follow their lead, but it's of
Speaker 3: assumed sometimes that the US is all unregulated and laissez fear,
Speaker 3: but no, they actually have extreme regulations on lobbying, on
Speaker 3: called money, etc.
Speaker 2: How come they rank so poorly though they're twenty fourth
Speaker 2: with a score of sixty nine verses US on three
Speaker 2: on a score of eighty five.
Speaker 3: I think there's different answers to that. And often what
Speaker 3: happens is you have the perceptions of corruption first, and
Speaker 3: then you have lots of rules that are made to
Speaker 3: try and fix this. So I think the US has
Speaker 3: had some big problems with this in the past, and
Speaker 3: so they've tried to tidy it up and they're tightening
Speaker 3: up things.
Speaker 2: Just one last question, in the terms of perception, I
Speaker 2: mean social media and conspiracy theories and all that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff are certainly more prevalent. Do they play a
Speaker 2: role at all in people's in this pecon in the
Speaker 2: Perception Index and ratings?
Speaker 3: Not really No, because Transparence International puts US together each
Speaker 3: year and they're mostly sururveying people in business, and so
Speaker 3: it's not the general public. It's business people, and it's
Speaker 3: overseas business people that are dealing with New Zealand, like
Speaker 3: trading with this country and things like that, and it's
Speaker 3: a lot of other I don't know reports and surveys
Speaker 3: of our our local systems working that feeds into that
Speaker 3: that index.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good stuff. Hey, Bryce, I really appreciate your time
Speaker 2: this afternoon. Enjoy the rest of the day.
Speaker 3: Cheers.
Speaker 2: There we go. There's Bryce Edwards, political commentator from Victoria University.
Speaker 2: Should I say doctor Bryce Edwards? And look, we're going
Speaker 2: to do some talkback after this. We've got a bit
Speaker 2: of time up as sleep, so time for you to
Speaker 2: jump in on e one hundred and eighty ten eighty
Speaker 2: in text on nine two nine two. Based on those
Speaker 2: two interviews, first, let's just talk about the one we've
Speaker 2: just had with Bryce. So the Hell and Clark Foundation
Speaker 2: report calling for tougher rules against corruption after a report
Speaker 2: claim lobbying and do nation rules needed and overhaul? Simple question,
Speaker 2: are you actually worried about corruption in New Zealand? Because
Speaker 2: maybe I've got my sort of blinkers on and it's interesting.
Speaker 2: I think it's always interesting to keep having these discussions.
Speaker 2: But still New Zealand is third in the third and
Speaker 2: the Corruption Perceptions Index, and the company we're keeping is Denmark, Finland,
Speaker 2: Norway and Singapore and Sweden. We often tal bang on
Speaker 2: about we always seem to have look at the Scan
Speaker 2: Andavian states and go, well, if we're up with them,
Speaker 2: when then we're rocking and rolling, well we are up
Speaker 2: with them? Or do you think this masks as Bryce's
Speaker 2: Bryce Edwards mentioned that our points are slipping a little
Speaker 2: bit and so it's something that we should keep an
Speaker 2: eye on. And let's be honest, who would be comfortable with,
Speaker 2: say a former prime minister who's just resigned or deputy
Speaker 2: prime minister or Minister of something suddenly walking straight back
Speaker 2: in the office where they've been inhabiting as a lobbyist.
Speaker 2: Do you think that there is some argument there that
Speaker 2: we should have stand down periods with Ben And more
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, if you are worried about corruption, what's your
Speaker 2: biggest worrying worry? Is it donations? Is it just the
Speaker 2: way the OIA is handled, or is it foreign bribery
Speaker 2: and influence? Because instinctively, for me, my biggest one would
Speaker 2: be foreign influence because that's probably the one where I
Speaker 2: don't know it'd be harder to detect. Give us a
Speaker 2: call on eight hundred and eighty ten eighty, but also
Speaker 2: on the on the drug and the announcement around more
Speaker 2: drink and drugged driver is going to be tested, a
Speaker 2: goal of three point three million tests a year announced
Speaker 2: by Simeon Brown. I don't know if you can really
Speaker 2: argue against that. I just guess the question is when
Speaker 2: it comes to druged drivers, the screening for that is
Speaker 2: more involved. How would you screen if someone's drugged or not?
Speaker 2: That might invite some interesting comment. Actually, oh, eight one
Speaker 2: hundred eighty ten eighty text nine two ninety two, and
Speaker 2: let's not worry about the email. It's twenty five minutes
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