By Dieuwe de Boer

I hadn't followed the story of Janet Dickson's fight against the Real Estate Authority (REA) very closely. I knew she objected to the REA requiring real estate agents to do a left-wing “cultural course” before they can be licensed. I admire her taking this conscientious objection all the way to a Judicial Review, which she unfortunately lost.

I saw associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee put out a press release in support of Janet Dickson with legislation in the pipeline to change the five year ban the REA can impose to something less harsh. That's great, right? When I read the press release I was shocked and outraged.

McKee had sent a sternly worded letter (a “Letter of Expectation”) to the REA last February that the cultural training course is not relevant and should be dropped.

I quickly checked the Real Estate Agents Act and then the relevant Crown Entities Act to confirm my suspicion: the minister responsible has the power to appoint and sack members of the REA at will.

In an act of gross insubordination the REA threw her sternly worded letter in the bin and had Crown Law vigorously defend the legal challenge from Janet Dickson. We know that “public service neutrality” is a myth, but here you have public servants openly disregarding a directive from the duly-elected government. It would be easy to replace them with just cause, even though none is required.

At any point in the last year, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith and associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee could have replaced the members of the REA.

The entire saga has happened because they wanted it to. Only they had the power to stop the radical activists running the REA, not the courts.

Don't get me wrong, I want McKee to succeed. I am not an ACT voter and never will be, but there is a lot of good policy she is working on. This shakes my faith that she has the will needed to deliver in the face of resistance from radical leftists under the remit of her own portfolios. MPs don't answer to the left-wing media, they answer to the voters who put them there to do a job. We will back you up if you do it. If Goldsmith or Luxon are in the way of hiring better civil servants, then we need to know.

The issue is not one of the rule of law, but the rule of men. There is nothing in the law forcing the REA to revoke Janet's real estate license for five years, to ignore conscious objections, or to mandate cultural indoctrination courses.

They are doing it because they want to. They continue in their positions because the ministers responsible want them to be there.

Nicole McKee has only promised a change in law that would fix nothing. Radical leftists run the REA today and they will run the REA long after she is gone. Unless they are sacked with the stroke of a pen and replaced with authorities loyal to the government's agenda or the REA is abolished entirely.

The message is clear: bureaucrats can refuse to implement the government's policies and nothing will happen to them.

All these left-wing indoctrination courses across every professional body could be removed today. They are not mandated by law, but are implemented by radical activists in the bureaucracy. The problem is the coalition, and National in particular, do not want them gone.

Nicole McKee may be in government, but she is not in power.

Originally published on GoodOil.