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Speaker 1: Now on another subject, and independent report has revealed that

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Speaker 1: Wellington Water staff took four months to tell regional councils

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Speaker 1: about an error in budgeting advice. In May, the water

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Speaker 1: company apologized for leaving councils with a bill of an

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Speaker 1: additional fifty one million dollars over three years. You'll remember that.

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Speaker 1: But the report has now suggested that the CEO actually

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Speaker 1: downplayed the issue to the board, stating that the company

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Speaker 1: could manage the situation within its current budget. Now Nick

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Speaker 1: Legett is on the Wellington Water Board, he's the chair

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Speaker 1: and he's with us. Now, Hey, Nick, Hi, Heather Tanya

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Speaker 1: Haskell has to go, doesn't she.

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Speaker 2: Heather, You know as well as I do that we

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Speaker 2: can't comment on individual employment, but I can tell you this,

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Speaker 2: the board is committed to improving this organization. There's a

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Speaker 2: lot of good stuff that comes out of well Into Water,

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Speaker 2: but this review has shown us that we've got to

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Speaker 2: improve the culture. We've got to elevate problems as they

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Speaker 2: come up and be upfront and frank about them. And

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Speaker 2: we've got to improve our systems, particularly in the finance

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Speaker 2: part of the business. And that's what we focused on

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Speaker 2: doing over the weeks and months ahead.

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Speaker 1: Okay, tell me you've got confidence in her.

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Speaker 2: I've got confidence in the organization that it will be

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Speaker 2: able to deliver for the six councils in the Wellington

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Speaker 2: region that it services and delivers water for. I mean,

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Speaker 2: Wellington has big long term challenges with water. We've got

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Speaker 2: a leaky pipe network and difficult wastewater treatment plants. We

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Speaker 2: have to be focused on those and the councils and

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Speaker 2: the public have to have confidence in Wellington Water that

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Speaker 2: it can deliver and improve those services with the limited resources.

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Speaker 1: It has explain something to me like if you can't

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Speaker 1: express confidence in her, what happens from here on in?

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Speaker 1: Is this something well you have to manage behind the

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Speaker 1: scenes because you can't talk about employment.

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Speaker 2: It matters. What happens now is that the Wellington Water

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Speaker 2: Committee today. I know there's a lot of Wellington Waters

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Speaker 2: but the committee, which is that the mayors and councilors

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Speaker 2: of the shareholding councils met. They said to the board,

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Speaker 2: thank you for initiating the independent review. We agree that

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Speaker 2: the review, we agree with the findings and by the way,

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Speaker 2: here is the improvement plan that we want to see

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Speaker 2: in four weeks time. Now there's a lot in that.

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Speaker 2: Obviously it is about systems and processes and controls and

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Speaker 2: potentially some additional resources to support the finance team, but

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Speaker 2: it's also about culture and actually being able to prove

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Speaker 2: to the public and councils that Wellington Water can be

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Speaker 2: trusted to get things right. Now, you never eliminate all risk,

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Speaker 2: but what we've got to do is do better and

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Speaker 2: that starts immediately.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Now, explain to me what happened on the first

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Speaker 1: of May, because on the first of May, the Chief

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Speaker 1: Executive Tanya met with you, the board chair and found

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Speaker 1: and told you that you guys had this fifty one

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Speaker 1: million dollar budgeting area.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and she told me we have you know,

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Speaker 2: we have that weekly catch up and she said that

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Speaker 2: that was we've got a bit of a budgetary era.

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Speaker 2: It looks as though we've underestimated or haven't haven't included

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Speaker 2: the fee that Wellington Water uses to run its operations.

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Speaker 2: It takes a fee off every project it does for councils,

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Speaker 2: and that wasn't included in the projects for the ten

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Speaker 2: year plan the ltps that councils adopt. And at that

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Speaker 2: point my alarm bells went off, but I was given

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Speaker 2: assurance a couple of days later that actually it's not

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Speaker 2: as bad as we thought and we can manage this.

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Speaker 2: And then the board met the following week and were

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Speaker 2: told the same thing, and we did. The board did

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Speaker 2: interrogate this. It wasn't just a sort of a passive Okay,

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Speaker 2: we did interrogate it. But you know, the board wasn't

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Speaker 2: given the whole truth because I'm not sure the truth

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Speaker 2: was understood.

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Speaker 1: What was the whole truth that you were not given.

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Speaker 2: Well, the extent of the problem. I'm not sure there

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Speaker 2: was an understanding about how big the problem actually was.

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Speaker 1: How many on the first of maineck you didn't have

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Speaker 1: a number.

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Speaker 2: We had a number of nineteen million over sort of

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Speaker 2: ten years, which is pretty manageable. I mean to give you,

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Speaker 2: just give me some context. Wellington Water delivered three hundred

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Speaker 2: and thirty million dollars worth of capital projects for the

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Speaker 2: councils and the region last year, and that's increased from

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Speaker 2: fifty million seven years ago, so that the companies grown.

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Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to step away from it, but

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Speaker 2: just this was part of the problem. The reviews I

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Speaker 2: need to find but I just want to haven't grown

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Speaker 2: with it?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I want to understand this though. So you

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Speaker 1: were told round about nineteen million over ten years, which

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Speaker 1: is manageable. You guys then interrogated it, and when did

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Speaker 1: you find out it was fifty one million.

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Speaker 2: Or not until probably the seventeenth eighteenth when the first

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Speaker 2: council was told. And that's been the council. I learned others.

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Speaker 1: Okay, And when you were interrogating her between the first

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Speaker 1: of May and the seventeenth of May, she didn't tell you,

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Speaker 1: obviously how big the problem was. Did she actually know?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's that's what I that's I think the level

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Speaker 2: of concern that the board has does did the organization

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Speaker 2: understand the extent? And actually this you know, we talk

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Speaker 2: about culture in a kind of loose way, but specifically

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Speaker 2: here this is an organization that there isn't sight across

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Speaker 2: the organization at times around whose responsibility there is to

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Speaker 2: find out issues to problems like this and secondly, whose

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Speaker 2: responsibility is to find the answer and then solve it.

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Speaker 2: And that that's the problem we're dealing with and heither

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Speaker 2: you might remember a couple of years ago there was

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Speaker 2: a review into fluoride because fluoride hadn't been added to

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Speaker 2: a part of Wellington's water supply for quite a period,

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Speaker 2: and Wellington Water to fix the system that dealt with fluorride.

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Speaker 2: But the same cultural elements that not being afraid to

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Speaker 2: give bad news a sense of where we feel exposed.

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Speaker 2: We don't know whose job it is to fix it.

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Speaker 2: We don't have someone internally that takes responsibility. Those issues

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Speaker 2: have come up again and I can tell you this, Heather,

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Speaker 2: this time we're going to fix it up.

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Speaker 1: Good Nick. I'm pleased to hear it. Sounds like you've

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Speaker 1: got quite a job on your hands. Thanks mate. That's

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Speaker 1: Nick Leiget, Wellington to board chair

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