West Australia-based Dr Andy Asquith – it seems – has become the go-to expert on local government, when journalists check out the dubious goings-on of local authorities.
He has been referenced in media reports this week dealing with a byelection in Porirua, the Tauranga City Council’s regulatory conflict of interest, and the Hastings District Council’s egregious urge to hush its code-of-conduct investigations.
As readers of PoO know all too well, those code-of-conduct complaints can be triggered by trivia but cost ratepayers thousands of dollars to investigate.
Asquith’s rebuke of the Hastings council was occasioned by its refusal to release details of complaints laid against its councillors.
According to the NZ Herald:
A local government expert has chided Hastings District Council for claiming it would be “damaging to the public interest” to reveal details of code of conduct complaints its councillors have faced.
The council has refused to release information to Hawke’s Bay Today about the nature of several complaints against councillors since they took office a year ago.
The article by Local Democracy reporter Linda Hall notes that all councils have their own code-of-conduct rules.
The Hastings District Council allows members of the public, council staff and elected members to make complaints to the council’s chief executive.
The chief executive has discretion – or the power? – over whether a request is lodged as a formal code of conduct complaint.
If a complaint is upheld, consequences range from a meeting with the mayor, to an apology, to an invitation to consider resigning.
But citizens are being kept in the dark about details.
Hall writes:
Hawke’s Bay Today sent a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) request on July 7, seeking reports and correspondence relating to Hastings District councillors investigated for alleged code of conduct breaches over the previous six months.
The response received Friday, August 28, said “we consider it would likely be damaging to the public interest if information about such matters is disclosed”.
And right there we can see a council being obstructive.
It took several weeks for it to say no, the Hastings public may not know about the details – for example – of code-of-conduct complaints about Hastings councillors who left a workshop on December 11, 2025, to attend a Napier City Council meeting.
The councillors in that case are not named and we can only conjecture on why they should be more concerned about matters being decided in Napier than in their home patch.
But we can have a good guess:
The meeting centred on Mayor Richard McGrath’s proposal to remove the voting rights and official voice of mana whenua (Māori committee representatives) from the council’s standing committees.
Yep. Newly elected Napier Mayor Richard McGrath had had the gall to propose removing mana whenua voices and voting rights in the council’s standing committees for the next council term.
Tribal leaders mustered their forces to rebuff this assault on their governance privileges.
RNZ reported:
It was an at times tense council meeting, with a packed public gallery, including members of local iwi Ngāti Kahungunu.
During the last triennium, there were two Nga Mānukanuka o te iwi representatives – representing a mana whenua voice – on each of the council’s four standing committees, under McGrath’s proposal those two representatives would be removed..
McGrath argued that – for him – this was a matter of having elected members who had sworn an oath to the city of Napier and to uphold the Local Government Act.
A majority thought otherwise.
When the result of the vote was announced there was applause from the gallery, which then broke into a rendition of Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi.
Hmm. Were Hastings councillors among the warblers?
And how much will their ratepayers ever find out?
Hall reports:
The council response says the code of conduct adopted by elected members includes a complaint process for addressing minor matters at “the lowest possible level of formality”.
It said that helped achieve good outcomes, kept the process cost-effective and that people involved had a “legitimate expectation that matters which are dismissed or considered minor will be confidential”.
It also said releasing the information “would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information … from the same source”.
The council did provide an investigation report into a code of conduct complaint against Cr Steve Gibson, who was found to have engaged in “low-level bullying” against an art gallery staff member – but this was made public earlier this year.
In that case, according to Hall’s account, the council said it considered the code of conduct complaint against Gibson outside “the norm”, because public disclosure of the investigation report negated confidentiality considerations.
That report related to Gibson’s actions towards a staff member at the city’s art gallery during an exhibition by Maori artist Diane Prince, which opened in November 2025.
It included an installation called Flagging the Future, which had a New Zealand flag laid on the gallery floor with the words “Please Walk on Me” stencilled on it.
The council’s censorial carry-on does not pass muster with Andy Asquith, a local government expert and adjunct research fellow at the University of Western Australia.
He says the public has a right to know the details of each complaint, even if they were frivolous or didn’t warrant action.
“The public is becoming increasingly disengaged with council, and the more they are excluded from information they more they disengage,” Asquith said.
He also questioned the inconsistencies which stem from every council in New Zealand adopting their own codes of conduct, which allows them to adhere to it in different ways.
“There needs to be a national council code of conduct,” he said.
“Otherwise, they are pointless.”
His credentials?
Dr Andy Asquith is a Faculty Member for AcademyGlobal and is described as “an unashamed local government scholar with a passion for good local governance and evidence based policy making”.
He has lectured in universities in the UK, Russia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia.
Before moving to Australia, he was Director of the Public Management Group at Massey University.
And this week he has been on tap more than once to offer his opinions.
The Bay of Plenty Times asked him for his views on the Tauranga City Council’s dual role as campground owner and regulator.
He said this created a conflict of interest in managing risk – in his opinion, it was impossible for a regulator to act independently with its own assets.
Speaking generally, he said he had never seen a council successfully manage both commercial activities and their regulation.
Asquith’s views were sought, too, on happenings in Porirua,
He told The Post having too many representatives from a particular interest group sitting on a council raised questions of independence.
That was his view on the political campaigning in Porirua where a staffer from the Whānau Centre, a Maori charitable group, is among candidates in a by-election.
The centre is headed by former Porirua deputy mayor and current Wellington City Council pouiwi representative Liz Kelly, who has been a vocal critic of Porirua Mayor Anita Baker on oversight of the region’s Wellington Water and her public backing of its former board chairperson, Nick Leggett, a former mayor of Porirua with whom Kelly clashed when she was Deputy Mayor.
Two of the centre’s employees, one of them Kelly’s daughter, are already sitting on the council.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE.
Asquith’s rebuke of the Hastings council was occasioned by its refusal to release details of complaints laid against its councillors.
According to the NZ Herald:
A local government expert has chided Hastings District Council for claiming it would be “damaging to the public interest” to reveal details of code of conduct complaints its councillors have faced.
The council has refused to release information to Hawke’s Bay Today about the nature of several complaints against councillors since they took office a year ago.
The article by Local Democracy reporter Linda Hall notes that all councils have their own code-of-conduct rules.
The Hastings District Council allows members of the public, council staff and elected members to make complaints to the council’s chief executive.
The chief executive has discretion – or the power? – over whether a request is lodged as a formal code of conduct complaint.
If a complaint is upheld, consequences range from a meeting with the mayor, to an apology, to an invitation to consider resigning.
But citizens are being kept in the dark about details.
Hall writes:
Hawke’s Bay Today sent a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) request on July 7, seeking reports and correspondence relating to Hastings District councillors investigated for alleged code of conduct breaches over the previous six months.
The response received Friday, August 28, said “we consider it would likely be damaging to the public interest if information about such matters is disclosed”.
And right there we can see a council being obstructive.
It took several weeks for it to say no, the Hastings public may not know about the details – for example – of code-of-conduct complaints about Hastings councillors who left a workshop on December 11, 2025, to attend a Napier City Council meeting.
The councillors in that case are not named and we can only conjecture on why they should be more concerned about matters being decided in Napier than in their home patch.
But we can have a good guess:
The meeting centred on Mayor Richard McGrath’s proposal to remove the voting rights and official voice of mana whenua (Māori committee representatives) from the council’s standing committees.
Yep. Newly elected Napier Mayor Richard McGrath had had the gall to propose removing mana whenua voices and voting rights in the council’s standing committees for the next council term.
Tribal leaders mustered their forces to rebuff this assault on their governance privileges.
RNZ reported:
It was an at times tense council meeting, with a packed public gallery, including members of local iwi Ngāti Kahungunu.
During the last triennium, there were two Nga Mānukanuka o te iwi representatives – representing a mana whenua voice – on each of the council’s four standing committees, under McGrath’s proposal those two representatives would be removed..
McGrath argued that – for him – this was a matter of having elected members who had sworn an oath to the city of Napier and to uphold the Local Government Act.
A majority thought otherwise.
When the result of the vote was announced there was applause from the gallery, which then broke into a rendition of Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi.
Hmm. Were Hastings councillors among the warblers?
And how much will their ratepayers ever find out?
Hall reports:
The council response says the code of conduct adopted by elected members includes a complaint process for addressing minor matters at “the lowest possible level of formality”.
It said that helped achieve good outcomes, kept the process cost-effective and that people involved had a “legitimate expectation that matters which are dismissed or considered minor will be confidential”.
It also said releasing the information “would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information … from the same source”.
The council did provide an investigation report into a code of conduct complaint against Cr Steve Gibson, who was found to have engaged in “low-level bullying” against an art gallery staff member – but this was made public earlier this year.
In that case, according to Hall’s account, the council said it considered the code of conduct complaint against Gibson outside “the norm”, because public disclosure of the investigation report negated confidentiality considerations.
That report related to Gibson’s actions towards a staff member at the city’s art gallery during an exhibition by Maori artist Diane Prince, which opened in November 2025.
It included an installation called Flagging the Future, which had a New Zealand flag laid on the gallery floor with the words “Please Walk on Me” stencilled on it.
The council’s censorial carry-on does not pass muster with Andy Asquith, a local government expert and adjunct research fellow at the University of Western Australia.
He says the public has a right to know the details of each complaint, even if they were frivolous or didn’t warrant action.
“The public is becoming increasingly disengaged with council, and the more they are excluded from information they more they disengage,” Asquith said.
He also questioned the inconsistencies which stem from every council in New Zealand adopting their own codes of conduct, which allows them to adhere to it in different ways.
“There needs to be a national council code of conduct,” he said.
“Otherwise, they are pointless.”
His credentials?
Dr Andy Asquith is a Faculty Member for AcademyGlobal and is described as “an unashamed local government scholar with a passion for good local governance and evidence based policy making”.
He has lectured in universities in the UK, Russia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia.
Before moving to Australia, he was Director of the Public Management Group at Massey University.
And this week he has been on tap more than once to offer his opinions.
The Bay of Plenty Times asked him for his views on the Tauranga City Council’s dual role as campground owner and regulator.
He said this created a conflict of interest in managing risk – in his opinion, it was impossible for a regulator to act independently with its own assets.
Speaking generally, he said he had never seen a council successfully manage both commercial activities and their regulation.
Asquith’s views were sought, too, on happenings in Porirua,
He told The Post having too many representatives from a particular interest group sitting on a council raised questions of independence.
That was his view on the political campaigning in Porirua where a staffer from the Whānau Centre, a Maori charitable group, is among candidates in a by-election.
The centre is headed by former Porirua deputy mayor and current Wellington City Council pouiwi representative Liz Kelly, who has been a vocal critic of Porirua Mayor Anita Baker on oversight of the region’s Wellington Water and her public backing of its former board chairperson, Nick Leggett, a former mayor of Porirua with whom Kelly clashed when she was Deputy Mayor.
Two of the centre’s employees, one of them Kelly’s daughter, are already sitting on the council.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE.
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