Tuesday, February 04, 2025



An appropriate process?

Back in December Energy Minister Simon Watts appointed John Carnegie and Vijay Goel to the board of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. The appointments looked dubious - Carnagie is chief executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa, previously known as the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand: basically, an oil and gas lobbyist. And Goel is an accountant who runs a pokie trust. So, I sent in the usual OIA, seeking all advice and communications on the appointments. I received the response today, and it shows the appointments are even more questionable than expected.

Watts' response included an explanatory letter and over 500 pages of documents (most of which are redacted). Watts' short explanation is that:

10 candidates interviewed for the two board member roles. Initially seven candidates were shortlisted and interviewed. Subsequently, a further three people were shortlisted at my request and were also interviewed. I appointed the two new members for terms commencing 6 January 2025.
...which doesn't really give the full picture. MBIE ran an entire appointments process for two roles between January and June 2024. In June 2024 Watts agreed to appoint one person (and rejected a recommended reappointment). MBIE drafted a cabinet paper, with appointment letters and everything, and then something clearly went wrong. No appointment was made, and the whole search began again. MBIE went immediately to the previous candidates, and here we learn that John Carnagie had applied in the previous round and was not recommended for the shortlist. Despite this, Watts instructed MBIE to interview him, then instructed them to interview Goel as well.

The interviews were not successful. A briefing on 19 September reported that "MBIE does not consider the candidates suitable for appointment". For some reason - whether actual or anticipated Ministerial displeasure is unclear - this briefing was "put on hold", and then rewritten. The rewritten version reached the same conclusions: none of the Minister's picks were recommended. Carnagie was "n the lower end of suitability for appointment", while Goel was "not recommended for appointment to the Board". In an effort to appear more "scientific", they quantified these conclusions with an "assessment framework". And while the actual scores are redacted as "free and frank", you can see exactly what the interviewers thought of the candidates from what is bolded in the scoring sheets. Carnagie ranked highly on public accountability, but scored poorly on stakeholder relationship management, and was a terrible board fit, assessed as "likely to relitigate board decisions, or undermine decisions that have been made" and "likely to create tension or conflict with fellow board members". Goel was just a nothing candidate, with no actual interest in the role, no particularly strong areas, and assessed as "likely to make little contribution outside area of expertise". Despite this, both were appointed anyway, with the Minister certifying to Cabinet that "appropriate processes have been followed in selecting the proposed appointees" and that "invitations for nominations were publicised and that nominations received were considered". Yeah, right. In reality, those nominations were ignored in favour of Ministerial cronies, who were appointed regardless of merit, despite being assessed as unsuitable for the job.

Its a perfect example of National's cronyism. And yet another argument for why we need to take government board appointments completely out of the corrupt hands of Ministers, and put them in the hands of a neutral statutory appointments body.