Dom Post smacks up Feslier

Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 10:54 am

The Dom Post’s editorial on Thursday was about Colin Feslier and the misleading over Winston’s car:

This newspaper has never found Mr Feslier, a former Radio New Zealand journalist and press secretary to Labour cabinet minister Margaret Wilson, easy to deal with: he dithers, he stalls and he obfuscates. But it is one thing to be unhelpful and another to mislead. No-one could read his email exchanges with journalists and colleagues and conclude that this was not his purpose.

Harsh language, but true it seems.

His sins are not in the same league as those of the former Immigration Service spokesman who was found a few years ago to have “deliberately dissembled” over the existence of the infamous “lie in unison” memo, but they are indicative of an unhealthy culture that has developed within some, but not all, parts of the public service as the number of spin doctors employed by government agencies has mushroomed.

And the lie in unison memo was covered up also in an internal whitewash.

Presumably, Mr Feslier acted as he did because he wanted to spare his bosses embarrassment over the 10 weeks it had taken them to try to reclaim public property from Mr Peters property that might still be unaccounted for if the news media had not asked questions.

But it is not his job to burnish his bosses’ images or to shield them from legitimate public scrutiny. Nor is it his job to deny the public access to information it is entitled to have.

Hopefully OIA requests will also be dealt with in a more timely manner.

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Posted in NZ Politics | 10 Comments »

Dom Post accuses DIA of mislading it

Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

Whale Oil has some documents from the DIA in regards to how theyhandled media inquiries into Winston’s non-returned cars, and they show a Department that stonewalled so much, the Dom Post Chief reporter gets really upset:

DIA staffer Colin Feslier e-mailed his bosses saying:

“I have managed I think to get TVNZ, TV3 and the DomPost to terminate their interest in this non-story.”

Then after the Sunday newspapers lead with the story, the Dom Post Chief Reporter Hayden Dewes e-mails Feslier

“I was extremely disappointed to read in the Sunday Star-Times today (1/2/09) that Winston Peters was still in possession of his ministerial car.

This after two of our reporters had very clear correspondence with you last week, asking about this very issue, to which you responded by giving the very clear impression that the car was “sold back, or under our control”.

I struggle to see how a car that is parked outside a minister’s house, with no clear plans to pick up the keys or get it back to Wellington except to send another driver up to Auckland at some stage has been “sold back or under our control”

The fact is that as of Friday at least, Winston Peters still had possession of his ministerial car. It had not been returned. We asked about this and you misled us.”

Kudos to Whale Oil for submitting the OIA requests to expose this. More bloggers should do the same (including me).

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Posted in NZ Politics | 26 Comments »