PSC launches Mahuta probe

The Herald reports:

Public service commissioner Peter Hughes is looking into the awarding of contracts to businesses associated with family members of Cabinet minister Nanaia Mahuta.

National Party spokesman for Public Services Simeon Brown first requested the commission investigate the matter in August, as details of a series of government contracts related to two companies owned by or related to Gannin Ormsby continued to emerge.

Ormsby is Mahuta’s husband.

This is a good thing.

Agencies appear to have bent over backwards to shovel work to Ormsby and co. Most contractors have to go through a burdensome tender process where you spend a couple of days filling in an RFP and then a panel considers all the RFPs against known criteria and recommend a contract. But in all of these cases Ormsby was contracted with no tender and sometimes without even a written contract.