Puerile attempt at blame game backfires on Labour

Many will have seen the story about how two victims of sex abuse were named on a Ministry of Justice website.

Simon Power announced there would be an independent review to find out how this happened.

Rather than wait for anything resmebling a fact, Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni announced she had worked out who was to blame – the National Government of course.

The breach of name suppression of two sex abuse victims by the Ministry of Justice is a mistake that should never have happened and is another example of the National Government’s failure to protect the rights of  victims.

Simon Power says he will be asking questions of the officials tomorrow morning to ascertain how this mistake occurred, when really he should be pointing the finger at himself and his Government.  The slash and burn cuts that the National Government have continued to make across the public sector, are inevitably going to result in mistakes being made.  The funding cuts to resources and jobs across the sector – equate to, additional pressure being placed on those still working there – leaving them stretched beyond the limit.

Rather sad that two victims of sexual abuse have had their identies revealed, and that Labour merely sees this as an opportunity to smear National and continue their ideological arguments that the public sector should be immune from the impact of a recession.

So was it some over-worked staffer in the Ministry of Justice who made an error, and ignored the Judge’s supression order? Is Carmel’s smear attack justified?

Well this later story reports:

The Chief High Court Judge, Justice Helen Winkelmann, says the court failed to note suppression rules on a judgement which led to the publication of the names of two sexual abuse victims on the Ministry of Justice website.

Justice Winkelmann, in a statement this evening following her inquiries, said it was an error and she very much regretted it had happened.

I’m amazed Labour have not yet found a way to blame the Canterbury Earthquake on public sector staff cuts.