While many wanted to see major changes to the council, to give it more teeth but less cost, only a few wanted to get rid of it altogether.
However, PR man Matthew Hooton – whose resume includes not only the trainwreck that was Todd Muller’s brief leadership of the National Party, but also PR guy for the first ever Fonterra CEO, the late Craig Norgate – disagrees.
“Just abolish it,” Hooton says. “The idea came from NZ Dairy Group that had one pre-merger, but the Kiwi Dairies side always thought it was stupid because it interfered in the relationship between shareholders & directors. But they went along with it to get the merger done.”
Norgate came over from Kiwi, so it’s safe to assume Hooton’s take came straight from the big guy himself.
