Two sides of super minister: Dr Joyce and Mr Hide

Steven Joyce’s wild fluctuations between obsessive micro-manager and arms-length delegator is creating chaos in his personal MoBIE empire, with him waving outrageous spending through but scrutinising reports for colour palette, format orientation and language, Labour’s Economic Development spokesperson David Clark said today.

“Officials are so exasperated by Steven Joyce’s behaviour one even said in an email: ‘the minister doesn’t know what he wants until often he sees what he doesn’t want’. Mr Joyce even agreed with his official’s assessment.

“OIA documents obtained by Labour paint a picture of a micro-manager who became so embroiled in the minutiae of the design of the Small Business Sector Report he chose the cover colour, dictated the report be in landscape orientation and complained that the language wasn’t clear and plain despite the words being cut and pasted from a previous report of his.

“But when it comes to the big issues, like wasteful spending Mr Joyce suddenly becomes a mix between an arms-length delegator and an incompetent manager. He has waved through the $67,000 spent on the MoBIE monolith sign as well as over $360,000 spent on luxury furniture.

“Mr Joyce was paying so little attention he didn’t realise the he got the cost of MoBIE monolith wrong and had to increase it from $44,000 to $67,339.

“So Dr Joyce the Minister for Micro-Management has changed to Mr Hide who hides behind his officials.

“Which one he is on any given day is the $67,000 question.

“At Select Committee today Mr Joyce defended waving through the spending by saying he is often accused of being a micro manager. He has to stop behaving so erratically and decide whether he is Dr Joyce or Mr Hide,” David Clark says.

ENDS

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