Labour conspired to keep candidacy from Police

The Herald reports:

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says his party talked to Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo “several months” before he decided to become a candidate.

And that is when he should have informed the Police.

The policy says at the earliest opportunity. It doesn’t say once your are confirmed which is the latest opportunity.

This is not rocket science. You let your employer know, so they can manage any potential conflicts. You have every right to stand for Parliament, but you must let your boss know early on, so they can take steps to mitigate any issues.

Hipkins said the party ran a shortened selection process for Naidoo so he could make a decision “very late in the piece, so that he could continue to preserve the independence of the police”.

Actually what this means is they put in place a special process so he could hide his intentions from Police.

“He didn’t go through the regular candidate selection process, which takes several months. He went through a different process which took us, literally a matter of days.

“That was because we wanted to make sure that he could protect the independence of the police and so could we.”

Again it has done the opposite. If Labour had not conspired with him to run a special process, then he would have told his boss months ago he was thinking of standing. His boss would have then worked on a plan to ensure he was in a role where he would not face any conflicts. If in the end he didn’t stand, then he would resume his normal role.

“Now, yep, there were conversations earlier on, over several months, but we deliberately did a process for him that was shorter so that he didn’t have to, finally confirm that he wanted to go ahead with a candidacy until right at the last minute.”

Labour and Naidoo choose secrecy over transparency. It was the wrong decision.

The Labour leader said people in different public agencies volunteer to run as candidates for parties across the political spectrum. 

“This is not new, this is not unusual.” 

If a senior member of the police ran as a candidate for an opposing political party while Hipkins was Police Minister, he would “fully understand that”, he said.

State sector employees running for Parliament is indeed not unusual. There is nothing wrong with it. What is wrong is not following the rules and disclosing at the earliest opportunity. If he had done that, then there would be zero issue.