I knew someone would mis-represent it

I knew someone would mis-represent what I said on Christchurch City Council, I just wasn’t sure who it would be. No Right Turn claims the prize. he says:

What is it with the right and democracy? In response to tensions in the Christchurch City Council, which have seen councillors criticise the Chief Executive’s lavish pay increase and autocratic style, DPF demands that “some or all” of them “must go”. Because obviously, the last thing you can possibly have in an elected body is disagreement. No, we should shut it down, sack them all, appoint a dictator.

Now unless Idiot/Savant neglected to read past the first paragraph of my post, he has deliberately over-looked the part where I say:

I am not an advocate of the view that on every issue, the minority on a Council must accept the view of the majority if it goes against them. It is quite legitimate to (for example) continue to fight against say an alcohol ban policy, if you as a Councillor thought it was a bad policy and a bad decision.

So I explicitly said disagreement in not the problem.

The fact of the matter is that these councillors are elected. They are there to represent their constituents, some of whom are not exactly happy with their council or its CEO. In other words, they are doing exactly the job we expect elected representatives in a democracy to do.

And again he has missed the key point. I never said Councillors can not criticise the Council, the Mayor or even the CEO.

But what they can not do is publicly state that the CEO should be sacked. Why? It’s simple – they are his employer. The Councillors who have done so have exposed ratepayers to a massive personal grievance and also made sure that if the majority on Council did want to sack the CEO, that they could only do so via a huge payout.

A Councillor can criticise the CEO when their performance warrants it (mind you it is the height of hypocrisy to attack the CEO for accepting a pay rise that the Council itself signed off on), but they can not publicly call for them to be sacked, as they are their employer.

What next? DPF will advocate the unseating of MPs who disagree with the government and criticise the public service?

No. What I would advocate is that a Minister who publicly called for their Departmental CEO to be fired, should be sacked. As their (effective) employer, that would also create an untenable situation. You can’t have employers publicly call for someone they employ to be sacked. I would have thought Idiot/Savant would have some regard for employment laws.