An inquiry into the former MP’s tenure as Chatham Islands Council chief executive reveals how one man’s poor decisions collided with a council ill-equipped to catch them, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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A $460,000 council house do-up

An auditor-general inquiry tabled in parliament on Thursday has found that Paul Eagle – the former Labour MP for Rongotai who took up the chief executive role at the Chatham Islands Council in 2023 – oversaw an “excessive” $460,000 upgrade to the council-owned house he occupied and supplied misleading documents to investigators.

The most significant spending issue was the house renovation, originally budgeted at $200,000, which ballooned after Eagle took sole control of the project – approving costs and managing contractors himself, despite being the tenant and beneficiary. He ordered Miele kitchen appliances worth $18,102 before the council had approved the revised budget; work on a garage conversion continued after the council formally rejected it. More seriously, documents Eagle supplied to auditors turned out to have been created or altered by him, including quotes, contracts and a builder’s signature. “Individually, any of those examples would be concerning,” the report said. “Together, they raise serious integrity questions for the council to contend with.”

‘I panicked’

That was far from the only problem. As Andrea Vance reports in The Post (paywalled), consultancy contracts agreed by Eagle – without following council processes – totalled $350,000, with one part subcontracted to his wife Miriam as project lead. Eagle also spent $979 on “food” over five days on a council credit card, and $580 at a digital design store in Hamilton. Flights allocated as part of his employment contract were used to transport his wife and child. Staff described the working environment in the council offices as “toxic”, with concerns about spending dismissed by senior leaders.

In a letter accompanying the report, Eagle acknowledged the findings. “In hindsight, I recognise I panicked when I realised documentation was incomplete and I tried to fix this,” he wrote. “I deeply regret that those actions did not meet the standards I expect of myself and my role.” Eagle resigned last month.

A council on the edge

The report grew out of a 2024 audit of Chatham Islands Council, which is struggling with serious money problems of its own. As Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne wrote last year, the Chathams council is unlike any other in New Zealand: 95% of its budget comes from a Crown appropriation of $4.2 million a year, capped at that level until 2027 and not adjusted for inflation. In September, auditors raised “significant doubt” about whether the council could continue as a going concern. “The council is so cash-strapped that it’s been living at the limits of its $500,000 bank overdraft,” Milne wrote. “It can’t afford to fix potholes or remove derelict rusting cars from the roads, or to connect any more houses to its potable water and wastewater.”

Writing in February, Milne reported that Eagle’s departure had been followed by a high-level meeting convened by regional development minister Shane Jones to tally up the full cost of Crown support for the islands. Jones said there were “some bloody hard decisions” that needed to be made for the council and “they don’t want to make them themselves”.

An invisible MP

This isn’t the first time Eagle has attracted scrutiny for his use of public money. After his humiliating loss in the 2022 Wellington mayoral race – he had been widely tipped as the favourite but finished third as Tory Whanau swept through – he largely vanished from public life while still serving as the MP for Rongotai.

In December 2022, Stuff’s Tom Hunt documented a mysterious lack of evidence that Eagle was actively working in his electorate. “Eagle has almost entirely disappeared,” Hunt wrote. “He has had no electorate office for about a year, his social media pages are a desert, locals who used to see him regularly haven’t spotted him in months.” Throughout, Eagle was drawing a parliamentary salary of $163,961.

He retired from politics at the 2023 election and shortly after was named as the new chief executive of Chathams Island Council. Milne notes that in recent months Eagle had been tipped for a political comeback as a NZ First candidate – a somewhat less likely scenario now there’s a damning auditor-general report hanging round his neck.