With Hamilton City Council’s reported financial situation rapidly getting worse, the 7th of May 2024 Finance and Monitoring Committee Meeting featured a dispute over the use of the word “fudging” by Councillor Andrew Bydder.

The Waikato Times sensationalised the situation by running the headline “F-word fracas leads to Andrew Bydder walkout from council meeting”  then explaining in the smaller print that the offending “F-word” was actually “fudging”. More concerning than Hamilton’s major newspaper being sensationalist, is Hamilton City Council being overly-sensitive about a Councillor mentioning the word “fudging”  in a debate about financial figures.

Approximately 58 minutes into the recorded committee meeting Councillor Andrew Bydder thanked a staff member who was reporting on the state of The Council finances with the comment “Bad news is good, if you get it early enough to actually make changes to make a difference. So really appreciate no fudging, hiding of the figures, telling us straight – that’s good to know”

Immediately Councillor Sarah Thomson called out “point of order”, reached for a document that was already at hand (presumably a copy Council’s Standing Orders ) and said “ 20.4, or, hold on, I think there could be multiple… ” before accusing Councillor Andrew Bydder of being “disrespectful or misleading”. In response, Councillor Andrew Bydder asked for an explanation about how that comment was disrespectful. Committee Chair Councillor Maxine van Oosten asked Councillor Bydder to “rephrase” then refused to answer Councillor Bydder’s question about what part was inaccurate.

After flicking through pages of documents, Councillor van Oosten and Councillor Thomson then cited “26.2 (d)” and “20.4”.  In the Council’s Standing Orders document, these are references to “misrepresentation –incorrect or misleading account of any statement made by a member or by an officer or council employee;” and “No member may speak or act in a manner which is disrespectful of other members, staff (kaimahi) or other meeting attendees or inconsistent with the local authority’s Code of Conduct at any meeting”.

Committee Chair Councillor van Oosten then allowed Councillor Bydder to restart his debate statement and he reiterated “I will begin by thanking Tracy for giving us the bad news because it is good to know the bad news so that we can make changes, and that she did not fudge or, um, distort or sanitise any figures”. Councillor (and Acting Mayor) Angela O’Leary then called out “disrespectful of staff”. Committee Chair Councillor van Oosten stated “I don’t believe using the word fudge is respectful enough to our staff”. Councillor Bydder then replied “I said that it was not fudged” with the Committee Chair then saying “I would ask you not to use that phrase, if you would”. Councillor Bydder would go on to state “my freedom of speech is being blocked, that is a breach of my human rights” twice before the video recording of the meeting is ironically cut, skipping ahead to Committee Chair Councillor van Oosten addressing a Council Chamber (absent Councillor Bydder) with the line “…the fact that it’s not always the news that we’re wanting. On the positive side the report shows there is areas we are doing well.”  

Councillor van Oosten and Councillor Thomson would go on to voice support for the idea that Central Government should return the GST collected on rates which would provide Hamilton City Council with approximately $40 million per year in extra revenue. Councillor Thomson then concluded with…

“Finally, I do want to say that I think it’s um us this finance staff put a huge amount of work into ensuring that they bring all information possible and that this information is is always transparent and it’s always as up to date as they can possibly make it. And I believe that the comments made previously had an implication, that you know, it implied that that may not be the case …that there would be a possibility that that wouldn’t be the case …and I found that disrespectful . Um, I think that our staff do amazing work to ensure that we get transparent information and it’s really and as an elected member um I’ve become increasingly concerned about some of the behaviour towards staff who work incredibly hard and under extreme amount of pressure at the moment with particularly with restructuring uh and so uh from here on I’m going to take a low tolerance of that.”

Councillor Sarah Thomson, Approximately 1 hour 6 minutes into the Finance and Monitoring Committee Meeting 7 May 2024

Acting Mayor Angela O’Leary then supported Councillor Sarah Thomson viewpoint, “I just want to support, um Councillor Thompson’s um debate points, all of them“

Although Councillor Bydder was not breaching Standing Orders by using the term “fudged” in the way he did, it is worth noting that the current Standing Orders does allow the Chairperson to decline to hear or cancel a presentation from a member of the public if “…the speaker is criticising elected members and/or kaimahi (staff)” (Section 16.2). The Code of Conduct Policy for Elected Members  also instructs that Councillors will “…avoid publicly criticising any employee in any way, but especially in ways that reflect on the competence and integrity of the employee”. These two policies shield council staff and elected members from criticism which restricts public discussions around mistakes and wrongdoing by City Council. Many Hamilton City Council projects, such as the V8 racing scheme and the Claudelands Events Centre, have caused heavy financial losses. The lack of accountability in those situations and Council’s repeated failures to “balance the books ”, means that public criticism is vital to improving the way Hamilton City Council operates.

Although the following quote from the Office of the Auditor-General, might leave us wondering if the ‘lack of accountability’ is ‘a bug or a feature?’ of the New Zealand local government system, this quote does show that Hamilton City Council staff have a history of providing advice to councillors in a way that is inaccurate, inadequate, and less than transparent.

“Under section 46 of the Local Government Act, if a local authority has suffered a loss as a result of certain types of unlawful or negligent actions, that loss may be recoverable from councillors.

Councillors have a defence under section 46 if the actions that caused the loss occurred without their knowledge, or if they acted in good faith and relied on information or advice given by employees of the authority or other professional advisers.

The Audit New Zealand report into the Council’s decision-making processes in relation to the V8 event was critical of some aspects of the councillors’ involvement in the decisions made by the Council.  However, the report identified a number of shortcomings in the accuracy and adequacy of information provided to councillors, and established that, in some instances, actions were taken without their knowledge or authority.

Given these findings it would not, in our view, be appropriate to seek recovery of the Council’s losses from individual councillors.”

“Auditor-General will not inquire into Hamilton City Council”, Office of the Auditor-General, 26 September 2012