June 27, 2010 10:00am by David Farrar

Len Brown says only Jesus would withstand his scrutiny

The HoS supplies another nail into Len Brown’s coffin – and once again Brown is supplying them:

Supercity mayoral candidate Len Brown has considered pulling out of the race because of the impact on his family, he has revealed in an emotional interview.

He said only Jesus Christ had withstood such a high level of scrutiny as him, and come out clean. If ratepayers demand that he identifies who he meets with, then he will quit as Manukau mayor.

Oh for fuck’s sake, I can’t stand such preciousness. Oh woe is me, like Jesus I am persecuted for my sins type crap. The fact is the so called high level of scrutiny is nothing. If he really can’t handle basic transparency and accountability, he needs to find a new job.

Tens of thousands of people with business credit cards have managed to avoid ever buying their groceries and a hi-fi system on them.

Of the 192 card holders at Manukau City Council, 95% of them managed to supply legal tax receipts for their credit card purchases. Len Brown was responsible for 13 of the 25 instances where no legal receipt was included.

This is not a Jesus type level of cleanliness needed – this is basic accountability.

And claiming he will quit as Mayor rather than reveal who he meets with – that just makes me incredibly curious about why he will not reveal who was at the $810 dinner.

You see no one is demanding to know who comes to see him in his office. No one is demanding to know who he chats to at a bar or even has coffee with.

But if he is going to spend $810 of ratepayers money at a dinner, then the ratepayers do have the right to know who he shouted to dinner with their money.

The mayor insisted he had no obligation to disclose who he had taken to dinner on public money, and that criticism of his spending was a Citizens and Ratepayers “smear campaign”.

Now he tries to play the victim card. It was the Sunday Star-Times (NZ’s most left wing newspaper) that asked all the Mayors in the region for details of their credit card spending. Not C&R. The problem for Brown is he had used it inappropriately and had also failed to keep proper documentation. They are legitimate issues for him to be held accountable for. And he has been the person most responsible for turning what should have been a one day news story into weeks of bad headlines.

And he has utterly refused to identify who he and mayoress Shan Inglis hosted at their table for an $810 fundraiser dinner at Volare restaurant in Manurewa.

He had good reasons for refusing to identify his guests, he said.

“It is against my principles. I am fighting back on what I believe are they key issues of this campaign and what people are vitally interested in.”

He shouted: “I clearly don’t give a damn about this stuff.”

“It’s critical for me as a point of basic principle as a leader and mayor of the city.

“I sit in this room. I don’t tell anybody I am having an interview with you today. It is between you and me. It is totally confidential.”

He said there was no requirement for him to disclose who he spent council money on.

Well the media have reported that in fact the Manukau City Council policy does require disclosure of who was at the dinner, as they paid for it. I mean this is seriously outrageous to say that he can spend unlimited money on dinners for people, and there is no obligation to reveal who.

“Transparency is not a perfect thing,” he added.

“Transparency doesn’t just happen in a perfect world. You have to measure that up against other significant principles and that’s what I’m doing and I will live or die on that.

“If people make a judgment and say, ‘we all agree you should tell everybody who you are seeing all the time’, then I’ll say, ‘that’s it – I am not the mayor any more’.

Again a red herring. People are not asking to see his diary.They are not saying reveal everyone you meet. They are not saying tell us about every conversation you have.

They are asking who he spent $810 of ratepayer money on at the dinner.

Now I can only think of two explanations for Brown’s behaviour in refusing to reveal who was at the dinner.

The first is that he is just really stupid and doesn’t understand the difference between revealing who you talk to is not the same as revealing who you shout out for dinner at the ratepayers expense.

The second is that he desperately does not want to reveal the names of those at the dinner, because it would be damaging to him.