Venues Ōtautahi’s CEO declared a conflict, then scored the winner first

When Venues Ōtautahi chief executive Caroline Harvie-Teare declared a potential conflict of interest in August 2024, she did what the rulebook asks. The husband of a personal friend was bidding for the beverage contract across the council-controlled organisation’s six Christchurch venues, including the new One New Zealand Stadium. Then she stayed on the scoring panel and ranked that bidder, Blenheim’s Moa Brewing Company, first of the four beer finalists, a Stuff investigation has revealed.

Moa beat Lion, Asahi and local brewery Cassels, and was confirmed only after a tie-break vote cast by the Crusaders. The franchise, Stuff found, did not know it held the casting vote until the paper asked this week. That is not a footnote. The external safeguard meant to neutralise any internal bias was operating without its own operator’s knowledge.

The defence is the paperwork

The agreed mitigations were that Harvie-Teare would score but not moderate, that proposals would be weighted against set criteria, and that the board would be kept informed. Board chair Gill Cox told Stuff the “perceived” conflict was “minor” and that the board “strongly reject[s] the sentiment that the chief executive incorrectly or unfairly influenced the overall decision”. Harvie-Teare said she has “no financial or other interest in Moa or in the outcome”, adding: “That is what good governance looks like: you declare it, document it and manage it.” Three Boys Brewery founder Ralph Bungard was blunter, calling the result “a bit of a bloody nose for the local industry”.

Nobody has alleged she has a financial stake, and there is no evidence the other panellists were swayed. But the question suppliers ask is not whether the CEO profited. It is whether the person with the declared conflict was still shaping the outcome. She was.

Auditors have heard this argument before

New Zealand’s public watchdogs have been explicit for years that declaration is necessary but never sufficient. In a 2023 case study on Callaghan Innovation, the Audit Office warned that “it is neither safe nor appropriate to assume that disclosure alone will be enough”. It put the onus on the organisation, not the individual, to assess how the situation could appear to an outside observer.

In its May 2024 report to Parliament, the Controller and Auditor-General went further, stating that “managing perceptions is just as important as managing actual conflicts of interest” and documenting cases where mitigations were inadequate or never reviewed. The Auditor-General’s long-standing procurement guidance makes the same point: a conflicted person can tilt a process consciously or unconsciously, which is why decisions must be fair and be seen to be fair.

The Teaching Council got the same answer this year

The closest parallel is barely eight months old. In February, a Public Service Commission review found the Teaching Council had awarded about $1.7 million in contracts to a firm run by chief executive Lesley Hoskin’s husband. Hoskin had consistently declared the conflict and was excluded from awarding contracts. The PSC still found that exclusion did not manage “any perception risks”, with then-Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche citing “poor tone from the top”.

Hoskin was kept away from the award decision and that still failed the test. Harvie-Teare was not kept away from scoring at all. On the standard the PSC applied, Venues Ōtautahi’s mitigation looks thinner, not stronger.

The local branding problem

This matters commercially because Venues Ōtautahi is no small operator. Its 2025 annual report recorded 718,000 guests across 408 events, and tender documents forecast more than a million patrons a year once the stadium opened. The same report leaned hard on its local credentials, claiming 80% Canterbury-sourced food and beverage and naming Moa as a key strategic partner. A Blenheim brewer taking the pourage rights at the city’s flagship stadium, over the one Christchurch finalist, sits awkwardly with that pitch.

There is an irony too. In April 2026, Harvie-Teare publicly called for transparency over a non-contestable government events fund. Her own organisation’s contestable process now needs the same scrutiny.

What suppliers should demand next time

Public procurement runs on one asset, the belief of losing bidders that they lost fairly. Once that goes, good firms stop tendering, prices rise and ratepayers pay. Businesses bidding into any council-controlled organisation should stop asking whether conflicts were declared and start asking how a declaration changed who scored, who moderated and who made the final call. If the answer is “nothing much”, the process is not arm’s length, however tidy the file.

Christchurch City Council, as owner, should now commission an independent review of this contract. The board’s confidence is not the test. The outside observer’s is.

Sources

• Stuff: CEO involved in major booze contract process despite declaring potential conflict (2026-10-30)
• The Audit Office: Part 4 – Conflicts of interest and the risk of bias (Callaghan Innovation) (2023)
• Controller and Auditor-General: Strengthening government procurement – Lessons from our recent work (2024-05)
• NZ Herald: Public Service Commission report into Teaching Council finds ‘highly concerning failures’ (2026-02-17)
• Christchurch City Council: Venues Ōtautahi Limited Annual Report 30 June 2025 (2025-09-23)
• RNZ: Transparency needed for govt events attraction package – Venues Ōtautahi (2026-04-13)