David Farrar: Throw it out

The Local Government Commission has published a draft code of conduct for local authority members. The idea is to have a standard one as best practice, but what truely have come up with is so terrible it should be scrapped.

Rather than focus on non-controversial stuff such as work in good faith and don’t defame people, they start with five paragraphs of highly contentious views on the role of the Treaty. This means that any Councillor who disagrees with these views could be hounded by code of conduct complaints.

They also have lots of other clauses that all restrict Crs being able to actually hold the Council to account.

In my view this draft is so terrible, the Minister should remove from the LGC this works programme.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders