Alison McDonald

Welcome to Surveying the Future, a podcast in association with the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors.

I'm Alison McDonald.

I'm an executive director at CBRE, and I've seen immense change through my career, and I was one of the very first executive directors within CBRE to come out openly as gay, uh, which was something that I was very nervous about, but actually I had nothing to worry about.

It, it has done no detrimental effect to my career, and in fact, it's just been an, an, an amazing enhancement that I've been able to be with a company that, uh, welcomes all to be open and welcome everybody.

I talked about accountability this time last month, specifically about MB boss Nick Blakely.

You'll remember that the Privileges Committee found Blakely and former Immigration New Zealand head Alison McDonald deliberately misled, what you and I know as lying, uh, deliberately misled Parliament.

And the Privileges Committee said their conduct was an insult to the public service.

And yet, who's the current head of MB? Nick Blakely.

Doesn't seem to have bothered him.

I'm sure Alison McDonald's gone on to a nice board somewhere.

She won't be locked up at home, covered in sackcloth and ashes, ruing and repenting.

Now we have the greater Wellington Regional Council filing charges against the Wellington City Council and Wellington Water for the catastrophic failure of the Moa Point Wastewater Plant, with the Wellington City Council and Wellington Water facing $100 million fines if the prosecutions are successful.