Decision reserved on M.W.D. transfers

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 8

Decision reserved on M.W.D. transfers

PA Wellington Judgment in the Ministry of Works transfer case was reserved by the Chief Justice, Sir Ronald Davison, in the High Court at Wellington yesterday.

Russell Owen Bullen, District Commissioner of Works, in Dunedin, and Colin James Reid, water and soil ' engineer in Dunedin, sought declarations that their transfer by the State Services Commission was invalid. A submission for the State Services Commission in relation to the two engineers was difficult to reconcile with “the continuing theme of discipline” that was in material before the High Court, said counsel for Messrs Bullen and Reid, Dr G. P. Barton.

He was replying to submissions made on behalf of the commission by the Solicitor-General, Mr D. P. Neazor, Q.C.

Each man also sought an order under section 4 (2) of the Judicature Amendment Act setting aside the decision.

Mr Neazor said the case for the State Services Commission fell into three parts. It was that:

• In fact the transfer of Mr Reid and Mr Bullen was not a penalty for any disciplinary breach but had been required for the proper conduct of the Public Service, in the situation which had been determined to exist at Dunedin, and to require remedial measures. • The circumstances in which the transfers had come about were not such as to require the State Services Commission to resort to the disciplinary procedures provided by section 57 of the State Services Act. • As a matter of law no opportunity to be heard was required before a transfer was directed for administrative reasons under sec-

tion 37 of the act. “The thread running through the staff paper was that the Dunedin district operation would have to be reorganised to cope with the clearly identified problems ranging from cost overruns to excessive overtime arising from the need to service major works being superimposed on the need to carry out normal work demanded of a district,” Mr Neazor said.

He said the commissioner’s attitude was clear. What was needed was to get on with the job. That was consistently the commission’s attitude. Mr Neazor said that there was a suggestion in the submissions for Messrs Bullen and Reid that what was supposed to be a management review became or was turned into a witchhunt. “The short answer to that, and the reason why the report seems so personally critical, is that before any-

one can solve problems the problems’must be identified, which involves looking at who has done what,” Mr Neazor said. “It cannot be done in a vacuum. “It is not hard to contemplate that when changes of such magnitude were required to meet a large problem, those responsible for the decisions might come to the view that fresh people with different approaches were needed, remembering that Mr Bullen had been the district civil engineer and District Commissioner of Works for over seven years and Mr Reid as water and soil engineer for over 10 years,” he said. Mr Neazor said that at no stage had the commission or the permanent head thought it appropriate to attempt to articulate the matters in issue in terms of disciplinary breaches.

Dr Barton said it was not entirely clear what attitude was being adopted by Mr Neazor.

“Does one say forget about the past and who did what, or is it necessary to know what happened in the past and who did what?” he said.

“It is interesting that Mr Chave, who was a member of the team and therefore a person who was peculiarly well situated to form a perspective judgment of what was happening, says, dealing with rumours he was hearing about the rationale for the report, that it was to be a means by which certain staff members were to be forcibly transferred,” Dr Barton said. Dr Barton said that Mr Neazor, under the heading of Isolation of Disciplinary Issues, had argued that “Yes, discipline did occur to Mr Norman (Commissioner of Works) and Dr Probine (chairman of the State Services Commission) but they put it to one side.”

“That, with great respect, is difficult to reconcile with the continuing theme of discipline running through all the material,” Dr Barton said.