The previous Swimwatch post, titled “Sport New Zealand it’s About Time”, discussed the need for the new government to address the poor performance of Sport New Zealand and High Performance Sport New Zealand. We drew attention to the stunning facts that eighty-five staff members are paid in excess of $100,000 per annum. Alex Baumann was living like a king on $420,000 a year and Peter Miskimmin is paid just under $400,000.

In contrast an Olympic gold medallist is paid $60,000. This reduces to $25,000 for a competitor ranked in the world’s top twelve. For Miskimmin to promote a value system where an Olympic gold medallist is only worth a little more than half of what eighty-five of his office bureaucrats are paid is way out of line. To go further into the ethical gutter and say that an Olympic gold medallist is only worth 15% of what Miskimmin pays himself and paid Baumann is unbelievable.

The message from Miskimmin appears to be that it takes almost seven Olympic gold medals to equal the financial value Miskimmin puts on his own involvement in sport. In 2012 his organization wet its pants over the four gold medals New Zealand won at the Rio Olympic Games. What a stunning performance Sport New Zealand said. What a massive contribution Baumann had made to New Zealand sport we were told. Sadly Miskimmin’s way of recognising the achievement was to pay the four athletes combined an amount that is only half of the amount Miskimmin puts in his own pocket. New Zealand athletes would have had to win twice the number of gold medals before their combined financial reward was equal, in value, to the contribution Miskimmin puts on himself.

In my opinion it is a disgusting allocation of funds. It is an unpatriotic use of national resources. I can’t help but believe it is a massive insult to the work and application of Hamish Bond, Eric Murray, Mahe Drysdale, Lisa Carrington, Peter Burling and Blair Tuke. The contribution of these men and women to the New Zealand nation and their importance as role models is immeasurably more important than Baumann and Miskimmin. Several thousand New Zealand pre-teens have photographs of Carrington or Burling on their bedroom walls as examples of what they want to be one day. None knows or cares about Miskimmin or Baumann.

It is interesting to consider what a fair allocation of resources should be. I do not have access to sufficient information to suggest numbers. However in principle whatever Miskimmin is paid, the same amount should be paid to New Zealanders who become the best in the world at what they do. Others can decide what that means in terms of how much more the likes of Carrington should be paid and how much less should go to Miskimmin and his bureaucratic mates.

While Miskimmin is the CEO of Sport New Zealand things are unlikely to change. Why? Because at the top of the organization Miskimmin’s boss is a man called Sir Paul Collins. He is totally a Board Room money man. He has been on the board of more than 50 listed companies in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and London. He is an executive director of the private investment company Active Equity Holdings Limited, and is a former Chief Executive of Brierley Investments.

I knew him when I taught his children to swim four days a week in the indoor 25m pool attached to his Wadestown home. You get a feeling about people when you work for them. My impression was that Collins enjoyed the role of “lord of the manor”; slightly aloof with an annoying disdain for the hired help. At the time I was coaching, Toni Jeffs and Nichola Chellingworth, New Zealand’s two fastest freestyle and butterfly swimmers. Not once did Paul Collins show any interest in their progress; a fact I found strange given his role in sport. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his wife was warm, welcoming and thankful for my work I would never have stayed as long as I did. Collins, it seemed to me, appeared to fit perfectly into the corporate raider reputation enjoyed by Brierley Investments in those days.

I might be wrong, but I can well imagine that Collins sees nothing wrong or even unusual about the $400,000 paid to Miskimmin and Baumann compared to $60,000 paid to an Olympic gold medallist. That attitude would fit right in with my experience. To work as it should Grant Robertson’s first job will need to be to replace Paul Collins and Peter Miskimmin. He should enjoy that. Unbelievably Miskimmin is not only paid almost seven times more that an Olympic gold medallist, his pay is $112,000 more than Robertson.

There are occasions when organisations spiral out of control. When he was CEO of Brierley Investments, Collins made a fortune out of taking over companies that had lost their way. And now Collins is Chairman of Sport New Zealand in equal need of reform. Several years ago the London Financial Times asked a well-known Deloitte’s insolvency manager to explain the signs he looked for in a company about to have problems.  The Financial Times expected to recieve an essay discussing debt to equity ratios, profit margins and the like.  Instead they were given a list of six danger signals.  They were:  three flagpoles at the Head Office front door; excessive management remuneration; a Chairman who owns a racehorse; a Head Office kitchen and dining room; a chauffeur driven car for the CEO and a corporate aeroplane.

Apart from excessive management remuneration I doubt that Sport New Zealand has any of those issues on that list. But we know they do have their own version of three flag poles at the door. The organisation has drifted on through the nine years of National government rule without sufficient control or discipline. Things have got out of hand. Let’s just hope that Grant Robertson is as successful as Chief Hone Heke at cutting down flagpoles.