Code of Conduct 2023

Conducting the code of Council. The importance of earnest oaths.

I’ve been asked ‘what on Earth were you thinking?’ when I lodged the Code of Conducts against the Mayor and Cr Houlahan. Lodging a complaint is a serious business, and runs on for months, which is stressful on everyone. I’m grateful to Cr O’Malley for leading our joint complaint and think its unfortunate that lodging one led to the other. The burn is that if you sign the complaint, you are not able to participate in the Council meeting discussing it, or comment about it while the investigation is ongoing.

I was gut-wrenchingly upset at the comments made by the Mayor on national radio minimising the racist outburst by Community Board Chair Barry Williams and breaking our confidentiality. It took a week for the complaint to be lodged as I listened to the outrage from the community and realised I was, as the ODT put it, in an ‘invidious position’. Being the city’s deputy mayor was a role I was so honoured to have, but, as always in my life, my integrity came first. Holding my values in my heart is the core of who I am.

Our community hurt so much from the incident. After we laid the complaint and I resigned I had people telling me their racism stories with tears in their eyes, and running up to give me hugs in the street. There is a deep well of pain in our city about the way some of our people are treated. We all need to look in the mirror and think of other’s feelings. Our Dunedin should be the warmest place in the world. I often tell people “Cool city, warm hearts”. Having a tourism background I know that we have something special here in the way we host our guests. Our famous ‘southern hospitality’ firstly needs to extend to our whole community, and especially our migrants. After all, we all migrated here one way or another and our city is founded on looking after each other.

When I stood for Council I had as my first priority to rebuild trust with our community and lead respectful and professional behaviour from Councillors to create trust in the democratic process. These were integral to who I am as a person and my respect for the Councillor position as a public representative and an ethos of public service. Its been a rough few years and I’m concerned to see challenges to the democratic process and a growing mistrust of politicians. I want our Dunedin residents to feel they can trust and respect their representatives and that we uphold the values of our city. I want our city to be a shining example of leadership, doing great things for our community. To do so we need to make sure we stick to our own rules, our Code of Conduct, and lead with integrity and respect.

When I swore my Oath as a Councillor I swore to “faithfully, impartially and according to my best skill, judgement, execute and perform my duties in the interests of Dunedin City”. This includes upholding to our Code of Conduct and I take my oath to our community extremely seriously, so this led to the complaints being laid.

I was relieved to get the outcome, where both parties were found to have breached the Code, and brought themselves and/or the Council into disrepute. It’s been a long time waiting for the investigation to be concluded and at a large personal cost. Any human can imagine what it feels like to open the local paper and see your name appearing again, especially when you can’t comment as the investigation process is undertaken. I’m so grateful to all the people who wrote supportive positive letters, opinion pieces and understood the ‘why’ of what I was doing.

The recent ODT editorial said it best “In the middle of it all has been Cr Barker. She has been especially badly treated for taking such a dignified and principled stand, one which led to her upbbraiding the mayor for his actions and resigning as deputy mayor. How many deputies have the courage to put their money where their mouth is like that?”

The editorial also remarked “Cr Houlahan’s treatment of Cr Barker has been unfair and over the top. The tone and persistence of the text messages released publicly during the code of conduct was unnecessary.” Those texts also mentioned a family member of mine and were so very hurtful. I would have appreciated a meaningful apology acknowledging the impact the texts and behaviour had upon me. However, with a new year upon us I consider the matter closed and look forward to a productive 2024 and a Council that debates the issues respectfully.

In the interests of transparency, and given that all the Code of Conduct information was released to the media I have included it on my website in case anyone wants the full information (bits have been redacted to protect people). It’s often challenging to have the media filter on Council issues, when there is an awful lot of information they have to wade through, with deadlines, word limits and the pressures of journalism. I am grateful to the professionalism of the journalists who followed the story and reported impartially on an issue that was complex, given the personalities involved.

Thanks to everyone who supported me through this difficult time as there was a lot of pressure from the behaviour around laying the complaints. I really appreciate the huge amount of people reaching out and helping me stay strong and remaining on Council. – I love this community of ours xx