David Dawes's resignation has been widely expected for months, since the auditor released a highly critical report on Land Development Agency dealings in September and Chief Minister Andrew Barr announced soon after that the agency would be abolished.
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But Mr Dawes has kept his colleagues waiting, separating his departure from the controversies of 2016 and choosing the time of his departure, a decade after he entered pubic service from the private sector, where he owned a speedway, petrol stations, real estate agencies and ultimately was boss of Master Builders.
It was Jon Stanhope who persuaded Mr Dawes into the public service, drawn to his real-world experience and reputation for getting things done. Stanhope was and is a man who wanted to shake things up. Stanhope has become a loud critic of the Land Development Agency, for what he sees as its manipulation of prices and squeeze on affordable housing. But he has never blamed Dawes for this; he lays the blame at the feet of Dawes's political masters and his former Labor colleagues in government. From this viewpoint, Dawes has simply done what he was asked to do.
This may well be, certainly in the case of affordable housing where decisions are led at the political level. The power is in the hands of Chief Minister Andrew Barr and his cabinet to determine whether the agency must maximise land prices, boosting a troubled budget, or alternatively drive prices down and find ways to help people on low incomes into property.
But excessive land prices are not the only criticism of the agency. Much more difficult to fathom is the series of land deals in 2015 and 2016 scrutinised by Auditor-General Maxine Cooper. She found the purchases of land in Glebe Park and two lakeside businesses, totalling about $7 million, lacked transparency, accountability and rigour and their integrity and probity could not be demonstrated.
Dr Cooper also drew attention to the relationship between Colliers and the Land Development Agency, and the unusual relationship between the agency and a consulting firm Elleven, with former agency executives moving to the Elleven to continue working on agency projects – an arrangement Mr Dawes said he did not facilitate.
The City to the Lake payments were $3.8 million to Glebe Park landowners Barry Morris and Graham Potts, $1 million to the leaseholder of the paddle boat business Pat Seears, $575,000 to his brother Jim Seears who sub-leased the paddle boats and made his livelihood from the business and $1.1 million to owners of the bike hire business and building Jillian Edwards and Martin Shanahan.
Questions were raised about the rationale and process, especially in the case of Glebe Park and Pat Seears. And despite Dr Cooper's detailed examination, how those deals came about and were allowed to stand remains unsatisfactorily explained.
At a wider level, that set of deals did nothing to dispel concern about the web of close relationships has built up between the private development and consultancy sector and the public agency, the people in control of the most lucrative business in town.
Those perceptions had been allowed to fester for many months before the audit report, most explosively in the wildly ill-judged handling of the Grocon bid to redevelop Manuka oval.
And whether or not he is simply trying to get things done for his political masters, Mr Dawes cannot avoid some responsibility for the failings and the perceptions that surround them.
At the same time, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Andrew Barr has mishandled concerns over the Land Development Agency's treatment of land release and city developments, leaving his department and its head in a kind of excruciating and debilitating limbo. If Mr Dawes had felt direct responsibility for the failures, he could have been expected to resign in September, rather than putting six or so months between the audit report and the announcement of his departure. He presumably feels some need for vindication.
If Mr Barr had responded earlier and with more decisive action, if he had launched an investigation into the matters uncovered by Dr Cooper, if in the months earlier he had taken more seriously the need for more transparent and rigorous systems for lobbyists and consultants and for public servants moving between the sectors, he might have succeeded in convincing the worried public that the problems were being treated with the urgency they deserved. Instead, we are left with the lingering feeling that no-one is going to take responsibility.
