Thursday, February 26, 2015

On Carmel Sepuloni's "conflict of interest"

On one hand I can agree with the Whale that Carmel Sepuloni should not be punished for the (alleged) sins of her mother. Andrew Little has stood her down from the welfare portfolio because her mother is facing numerous benefit fraud charges, citing a "conflict of interests".

On the other, Sepuloni has a history of getting directly involved with WINZ staff and interfering in their decisions.

In her own words, after intervening to get a benefit reinstated when someone volunteering in her office missed a WINZ seminar thereby breaking the rules of entitlement:

Get it together WINZ! Not all of these poor young people are going to have an MP on their case, who can ring up and leave rather firm voice messages for you when these mistakes happen.

She set a precedent that has bearing on the current circumstances.

3 comments:

Jim Rose said...

Yes, I happen to agree that she shouldn't have stepped out. There is this great little line by Margaret Thatcher about can't choose your relatives.

AndrewDM said...

Andrew Little was right on the money in suspending Carmel. He knows her better than we do.

pdm said...

AndrewDM - if that is the case why did he appoint her in the first place?