New Zealand loves the
performance
of oversight. Pure theatrics and yet even
more
jobs for the boys (and girls).
Drawing on a bottomless public purse, it builds commissions, writes unenforceable "codes of conduct", appoints
industry "watchdogs", and funds an alphabet soup of
regulatory bodies
whose sole public justification is (on the face of it and for the sake of continued funding and website content) to ensure
standards,
integrity, and
safety.
Supposedly.
Yet when the rubber hits the road - whether in Departmental boardrooms, Council chambers, the upper echelons of the country's constabulary, or the hallowed halls of a university (a
so-called centre of learning "excellence") - the playbook is identical:
close ranks,
obfuscate,
lie,
redact,
run down the clock, and let the public or the victim carry the financial and/or emotional wreckage . . . while looking down in
arrogant bemusement from the massively asymmetrical vantage point their
taxpayer or donor-funded positions afford them.
The headlines and the acronyms change, but the
systemic rot,
dishonesty, and
outright cowardice and
cover-up don't.
Take the latest corporate exit out of Wellington: the departure of Financial Markets Authority chief executive Samantha Barrass following an independent MBIE probe into "concerning matters". Another textbook case of public sector choreography and bureaucratic PR-ism.
When
leadership fails or
conduct falls into question at the highest levels of our "regulatory" apparatus - as it so often and with increasing regularity does - the public is rarely afforded genuine transparency or accountability. And "rarely" is being generous.
They're offered lies, smoke-overs, and - Massey's specialty à la Veterinary "School" "Dean", the utterly erstwhile Jon Huxley -
silencing threats and gag order attempts by big-budget national law firms . . .
funded, of course, by the taxpayer and their blindly loyal donors.
The public - or in Massey's case, the pet owners (their richly paying clients, no less) - are left with the
physical, financial, and emotional carnage (including dead or
soon-to-be-dead dogs), while the
VCs, the
Deans, and the
veterinary "experts" laugh all the way to their next salary increase or research grant.
Let's look at some of the scum on the top of this pond of collective corruption that leaves the public to foot the bill (whatever form that takes) while the machinery of non-accountability and avoidance keeps grinding on unchanged:
- Mt Maunganui: Where Council's laziness and basic safety and communications failures have left communities fighting for basic environmental accountability, and families left to grieve their loved ones in the face of entities more concerned with PR fall-out than those their laxness and irresponsibility decimated.
- Moa Point: Decades of deferred maintenance, municipal mismanagement, and bureaucratic buck-passing over Wellington's critical wastewater infrastructure now sees ratepayers, already groaning under the weight of rates bumped up to hell to fund bizarre frivolities and helium-inflated staff bloat, bearing the cost of catastrophic failures. Executive leadership accountability? Nil.
- McSkimming: A woman's life harrowingly, deliberately, and strategically dismantled by a layer of colluding, bro-guarding scumbags posing as the "executive" top brass at the top of New Zealand's supposedly justice-driven "Police" department.
- The Ministry of "Social Development": Where does one start? Perhaps with the unfortunately NOT atypical example of the solo mother who took her own life because the bastards joyously bullied her with an errant or falsified bill for tens of thousands of dollars and a completely wrongful claim. Oh, but they "apologised" later under extreme duress. I'm sure her kids felt SO much better for that "apology". Along with the kids of all the other victims the staff of this horror story of a "Ministry" is empowered to bully, victimise and destroy.
And where it's all a thoroughly protected norm by virtue of a
collusive Veterinary Council of New Zealand (VCNZ), the Deputy Chair of which is none other than – you might have guessed it - Massey’s Dean of
Veterinary Education, Academic Program Director, “Professor” Jenny Weston. (And for an added layer of accountability evasion, the
Veterinary Council requires the names of individual veterinarians for any complaint to be accepted,, so all Massey’s “veterinary hospital” management and staff have to do to avoid even getting in front of the Veterinary Council in the first place – for whatever good that would do which would be nil – is to
redact all staff names from an animal’s “clinical” records. Which is
all in a day's work for the University's governance guru, Jodie Banner.)
Every one of these institutions relies on the same cynical calculation: that individuals will run out of money, energy, patience, physical or emotional stamina, and general steam, before the institution runs out of its never-ending supply of bureaucratic stalling tactics (and salary increases and executive bonuses).
They rely on the fact that an ordinary person fighting a multi-million-dollar bureaucracy will eventually break under the wall of
lies and collusion, the pressure of legal fees, administrative stonewalling, systemic indifference and general exhaustion.
BUT . . .
In the case of the
ethics disaster, clinical incompetence joke and
utter shamelessness that is Massey University's "Veterinary Teaching School" aka "Companion Animal Hospital", there is at least
one deeply wronged individual who won't be running out of steam any time soon - even though
they made sure her deeply beloved pet did, once they'd finished
torturing him as a training tool and
monetising him for video “teaching” productions.
Big mistake, you bastards.
Photo: Veterinary Sciences Complex. Vet Clinic entrance, September 2014 by Massey University (Tāmiro), CC BY 3.0 NZ
