Leighton Associates congratulates the Guardian newspaper on scooping the first international level media report on government corruption in New Zealand.
About time too!
The Guardian newspaper carried a report by two Kiwi journalists, Max Harris and Phoebe Carr. They wrote it for the Spinoff and it was reprinted in the Guardian on 25 August.
It's about how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) is run. The article is about marketing Covid vaccines and whether to maximise health or profit - MFAT prioritised profit.
MFAT are the people who brought you the "hidden treaty" - the UN Convention Against Corruption that went "missing." New Zealand signed it but could not comply with it because of the practices of lawyers and judges. It put a duty on the government to end corruption and to ensure proper employment practices in the public sector. Leighton Associates has already reported on breaches by High Court judges and everyday employment lawyers. The international press is just starting to wake up to it.
Here's what the international press says about MFAT:
"It is not clear ... whether ministers or the cabinet were involved with formulating New Zealand’s position ..."
So are New Zealand ministers or cabinet bothered that the international press think they are not running foreign policy?
"The episode sounds alarm bells about decision-making in New Zealand trade and foreign policy. Dialogue on foreign policy is dominated by a privileged few. ... The correspondence between MFAT and the minister’s office raises the question: who should get to decide New Zealand’s position on key international issues?"
Well at least some journalists are Jacinda and the MPs are puppets for the "privileged few."
Maybe Jacinda and the MPs don't care.
The authors of the article in the Guardian say this is about MFAT maximising profit for private companies.
At Leighton Associates we see MBIE doing exactly the same, but with a lot of collateral damage in the many employees that are destroyed because they know too much about the unacceptable things that the "privileged few" do with those protected private companies - and in public organisations where the "privileged few" can use public money and also take it home with them.
We look forward to the Guardian newspaper reporting on the equally established corruption in MBIE.