Will MBIE be held on contempt?

The Herald reports:

Ministry officials are denying they deliberately misled a Parliament select committee by not revealing an immigration IT project had been terminated while being questioned about its progress. 

Appearing before Parliament’s Privileges Committee today, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) chief executive Nic Blakeley and former Immigration New Zealand (INZ) head Alison McDonald insisted they hadn’t intended to hide the project’s cancellation from MPs and instead had believed the matter was commercially sensitive and couldn’t be discussed as negotiations were ongoing.

Commercial sensitivity doesn’t trump misleading Parliament. Also it is not clear if it was commercially sensitive – they just said they believed it was.

Blakeley and McDonald apologised to the committee of cross-party MPs and conceded a “different approach” could have been taken; an admission at times met by exasperation by sceptical MPs, including committee chairman and National minister Chris Bishop, who at points threw up his hands and declared the project a “disaster”.

This suggests the Committee may not be in a forgiving mood.

At a March select committee meeting, McDonald, who previously headed INZ, which sat within MBIE, was asked by Labour MP Phil Twyford about the risks posed to the project.

McDonald linked delays to the fast-paced evolution of technology and referenced ongoing work to ensure the country’s identity management system was fit for purpose.

Blakeley, who had appeared alongside McDonald, echoed how the ministry was in the process of working out what the programme would look like.

The project was actually dead at this point.

However, he later conceded MPs could have been told the IT project was not continuing or officials could have briefed the committee in a private session. 

“In hindsight we should have taken a different approach.

“I agree, we got it wrong.”

Blakeley wouldn’t acknowledge his statements were inaccurate when asked during the hearing, instead accepting they were “incomplete”.

It might not have been a lie, but it was clearly misleading. The Privileges Committee should make clear how unacceptable this was, so other government departments don’t do similar in future.