It鈥檚 hard to take the sa国际传媒 Liberals鈥� ethnic-outreach scandal seriously, now that the rampant ineptitude has been exposed.
Deputy Minister to the Premier John Dyble鈥檚 report is the story of a clumsy bunch of stumblebums who would have trouble reaching out to their own mothers, let alone to ethnic communities.
One hapless executive assistant, briefing then-cabinet minister John Yap on how they were trying to fix a hiring process, wrote: 鈥淚t is absolutely critical that we do not leave any evidence [of] us helping them through this application.鈥�
It was cute to see that little tip included in the report as ... um, evidence. The surreptitious, clandestine nature of the enterprise is stressed multiple times in the evidence Dyble and his deputies located.
Despite the zeal the outreach team showed for secrecy, they managed to bumble that completely, along with everything else they attempted. If these clowns were on Seal Team Six, Osama bin Laden would be alive.
Then-cabinet minister John Yap鈥檚 reply to the genius advice was: 鈥淕reat job. Let鈥檚 now hope for the best.鈥�
The chance of him returning to cabinet exonerated 鈥� as Premier Christy Clark hoped 鈥� disappeared in a puff of smoke when they handed out that page. He鈥檇 already torched himself by admitting to Dyble that the reason his former staff were using personal email for correspondence on the issue was to avoid freedom-of-information laws.
Only they couldn鈥檛 even get that right. Government IT people recovered about 10,000 documents, and it鈥檚 a safe bet that some emails from personal accounts were in that trove.
It was former communications director Brian Bonney who set the performance standard that the outreach posse followed. As a party activist, he parachuted into a senior government communications job in the fall of 2011.
After a detailed accounting of his government career, Dyble concluded that Bonney 鈥渕ay have spent up to half of his time on partisan activities.鈥�
In other words, a party hack pulled down $124,000 in taxpayer-funded salary as a member of the public service and may have spent half his time on partisan political activities.
Dyble called it a serious breach of the standards of conduct.
Among Bonney鈥檚 adventures:鈥� He helped three of the four outreach workers complete their paperwork. That counts as bestowing an inappropriate favour and helping candidates at the expense of others. It鈥檚 also an apparent conflict of interest, because two of them knew Yap. Wrong.
鈥� He and others engaged the outreach team and put them to work before the procurement process was concluded and contracts were in place. Wrong.
鈥� He was at a meeting of the whole gang where confidential government information on the minister鈥檚 priorities was shared with people not qualified to receive it. Wrong.
Other parts of the report give a flavour for how he conducted himself on this mission. The thrust of the findings is that government staff, caucus staff and party people were all mushed together in an outreach program to boost Liberal fortunes.
In one of his personal emails, he instructed the team not to tell the (leery) ministry program director that they knew him. In another, he circulated a form for the outreachers to use, then urged them not to use the same form when submitting stuff to the ministry director.
It鈥檚 worth quoting from again: 鈥淧lease do not send ... using the form we sent you!!!鈥� 鈥淯se any format you like, but not the form we asked you to use.鈥�
The whole disjointed, cynical, unethical, conflicted mess eventually collapsed late last year, before it had even gotten started. Multicultural ministry staff 鈥� who try to reach ethnic groups for their own sake, not the sa国际传媒 Liberal party鈥檚 鈥� raised enough objections that it was abandoned. Only $6,800 was paid to one contractor.
Bonney quit government last month, with the memory of being awarded a Queen鈥檚 Diamond Jubilee medal by another ex-multicultural minister, Harry Bloy.
It was just an unpleasant memory until someone with access to the emails leaked a batch to the Opposition. That raised the furor that led to abject apologies from Clark and her orders to Dyble to investigate.
His report was released on the last day of an aimless session that ends one of the strangest parliaments in sa国际传媒 history. You couldn鈥檛 think of a better conclusion.
