Ombudsman has to threat Willie with the Solicitor-General
Newshub reports:
The Chief Ombudsman has called out Minister for Māori Development Willie Jackson over a “trend of human error” in his office causing delays with responding to the Official Information Act (OIA).
The Ombudsman said Jackson’s office has consistently failed to respond to correspondence from the Ombudsman’s office and a lack of compliance with statutory requirements was “unacceptable”.
In one case, the minister’s office’s failure to follow recommendations in a timely manner meant the Ombudsman considered referring the case to the Solicitor-General. But, after an apology from the minister’s office, decided against it.
This sadly is a new low for compliance with the OIA and a new high for hubris.
A Minister of the Crown just flagrantly broke the law and ignored OIA requests and the Ombudsman’s Office, and only stopped once they were threatened with a referral for prosecution.
There are only two possible explanations here:
- The Minister’s staff were totally incompetent
- The Minister instructed the staff to ignore the OIA
Each of the three complaints involved the minister failing to respond to the requester within the maximum timeframe allowed under the legislation, the Ombudsman said. In two of the cases, the minister also failed to respond to requests from the Ombudsman for an explanation of the delays, the statement said.
Just ignoring the Ombudsman is unheard of.
The Ombudsman recommended the minister make responding to the request a “priority”, review his office’s procedures and remind his staff of the statutory obligations.
However, the recommendations weren’t met by the specified date of October 28 meaning “the minister did not meet the public duty to observe the recommendations”.
“As such, the Ombudsman informed the Minister of his intention to refer the case to the Solicitor-General for consideration and that he would publish a case note.”
This should be a sackable offence.