Bruce is an established governance and risk expert within the public sector, with active membership of audit and risk committees since leaving the Office of the Auditor-General in 2015. He is an independent member of 12 Audit and Risk Committees1 including Hamilton City, Wellington City, Christchurch City and Bay of Plenty Regional Councils for the 2022-25 local body triennium, plus he is the Chair of the Ministry for Primary Industries Risk and Assurance committee.

He is also the independent chair of Regional Software Holdings Limited (RSHL), a collaborative services venture primarily based within the regional council sector.

His work includes a substantial development dimension in supporting the growing understanding and maturity of risk governance and management within the council itself. This work has focused on developing effective approaches of achieving objectives through strategic risk management and defining meaningful definition of council’s “risk appetite”.

As an independent member, he is required from time-to-time, to deal with sensitive issues in support of council’s governance – including Code of Conduct reviews, mediating councillor-to-councillor and undertaking sensitive inquiries.

Bruce is an educator/presenter and is engaged for sessions post the 2025 local body elections on risk and financial governance. He co-convenes a quarterly interest group for risk committee chairs to develop understanding of sector issues and governance practice.

Bruce’s advisory work has involved:

• independent reviewer of organisations and significant council activities, including “health checks” on the overall capability and capacity of entities to “perform and deliver” and review of the capability and capacity of key functions

• maturity reviews of approaches to risk 

• reviews of trust and subsidiaries, events management and commercial investments 

• membership of project control groups on capital development programmes 

• review of delegations, contract performance and governance arrangements for capital development programmes

• expert advisory support for mediation processes

Bruce is part of the assessors group for Local Government New Zealand’s Te Korowai assessment programme.

Through his time at the OAG, he was heavily involved in the implementation of the decision-making, planning, financial management and accountability provisions of the Local Government Act 2002 as well as their successive amendments.

He graduated with a BCom/BA and is a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA).

Bruce is based in Queenstown and Te Anau.

1. In addition, at the end of the 2023 triennium, he retired as chair of Auckland Councils ARC, he was previously a member of Tauranga City Council’s Strategy Audit and Risk Committee under the recent commissioner arrangements and recently retired from the chair role at Invercargill City Council’s Risk and Assurance Committee.