I note several social-media political commenters have expressed concern at the appointment of Ms Pania Gray as one of two investigators into the hot-button issue of the voting and census shenanigans surrounding Manurewa Marae. This disquiet is based on a perceived conflict of professional interest between Ms Gray and a member of the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency – that agency having very close ties to Manurewa marae. Be that as it may, I have concerns of a different nature: I question if she is up to the task.
Some background: Ms Gray recently investigated claims of misdoings in the hire of a candidate to a senior role within Te Puni Kokiri (TPK). This was controversial because in the previous six months the candidate had been struck off as a teacher due to professional misconduct. Not just any old common-or-garden professional misconduct but, as the Teaching Council Disciplinary Tribunal said, “the most serious end of serious misconduct cases that come before the Tribunal.” So, it was very serious. The cynic might say predatory.
The scorned gentleman applied for the position at TPK, naming the chief executive – a friend of his father – as a referee and, after consideration, was eventually provisionally hired. Some good people at TPK were aghast, with no fewer than eight staff requesting reviews of said gentleman’s appointment and citing TPK’s reputation alongside other personal considerations. The sole adjudicator of ‘review requests’ is the chief executive. The review requests, all eight of them, were dismissed. The controversial gentleman was hired.
Following (bad) publicity, the chief executive requested an independent investigator look at the process, and his role in it, due to public scrutiny and his ‘perceived conflict of interest’. The investigator appointed was Pania Gray.
Ms Gray found procedural wants and inconsistencies but no blame to attribute and certainly nobody on the naughty chair. Was Ms Gray robust enough? To agree with her findings, we have to believe:
- The Chief Executive (CE) didn’t “know the applicant well”.
- That, despite knowing the former teacher applied for a different role with TPK earlier, a role for which he was turned down, and citing the CE as a referee, the CE knew nothing of his new application again citing him as referee.
- That not one of the eight ‘review requests’ reached him, despite him being the sole adjudicator of such requests.
- That he knew nothing of the more recent job application until speaking with the disgraced teacher’s father “on an unrelated matter” in late November 2023.
- That following said personal conversation and CE subsequently enquiring “of a Deputy Secretary about the apparent delay in TPK advising the applicant of the outcome of his most recent employment application”, neither of his deputy secretaries said ‘Oh, there’s this fly in the ointment – that only you can rule on.’
- That when he ‘found out’ about the review requests on 22 December 2023, he didn’t say ‘Hang on, that’s my job,’ despite being the sole arbiter of such requests.
- That upon discovering the review requests had been dismissed by unauthorised persons, the CE didn’t immediately overturn, reverse or re-visit them.
In short: Ms Gray’s recent report and investigation is, and was, sub-par as it raises many more questions than answers and, more importantly, sought no answers to very obvious questions.
I’m not sure she’s up to the job of this new, much more complex, and heavyweight inquiry.
