Newshub reports:

Newshub can reveal the percentage of callers to the 1737 mental health line who have hung up while waiting in a queue has nearly doubled over the past three years.

In January 2020, 16 percent of callers to 1737 hung up while they were in the queue. Three years later, it was 31 percent. It peaked in November last year at 33 percent.

Amazing. They announce $1.9 billion in extra mental health funding, and the outcome is 1 in 3 callers to the mental health line hang up because it takes so long to get the phone answered.

Once again we see the Government manage the rare feat of spending heaps more and delivering worse outcomes.

A group called Common Ground Aotearoa has launched, to advocate that rates should be based on land value, not capital value.

The weird thing is they are an anonymous lobby group. Their website doesn’t list a single name of who they are.

How do they hope to be taken seriously when they have no actual people listed.

I actually agree with the policy proposition. I think taxing just land, rather than capital value, would be good for the housing market. But they’re not going to have any real impact on the political process if they remain anonymous.

Juliet Moses writes:

You may have heard of Byron C Clark. In the last few years, he has been promoted as an authority on the far right/alt right extremism, and disinformation. With the parliamentary protest a year ago, he became one of the media’s go-to experts on such matters. This expertise is based largely, it seems, on him spending untold hours burrowing down fetid rabbit holes on the internet. He has just published a book “Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists” and is doing the press rounds promoting it. 

The far right is clearly a growing problem in New Zealand and elsewhere and, while I and others have serious doubts about Clark’s methodology, I don’t doubt his good intentions. However, if someone is purporting to be an expert on extremism, I believe it’s important to know about their own history on that subject. 

It is a matter of public record that Clark was a member of the Workers Party of New Zealand, a socialist/Marxist political party that operated for about a decade from 2002. He was not just any member of the party. He unsuccessfully stood for the Christchurch mayoralty in 2007 on its ticket.

So what, you might ask? Well, a major policy of the party was to actively support and fundraise for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, known as the PFLP, which was by then a designated terrorist organisation in the US, the EU, Israel and other places (although not New Zealand). In a 2014 profile on the PFLP, the BBC noted “Combining Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology, the PFLP saw the destruction of Israel as integral to its struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East.” The PFLP became notorious in the late 1960s and 70s for attacking airports and hijacking commercial aircraft and holding passengers hostage, sometimes destroying the aircraft and killing passengers.

So the guy who is held up by the media as an expert on the so called extreme right is himself a member of the extreme left. Marxism and fasicsm are equally bad, having caused untold misery and death. Both stand for powerful authoritarian governments.

But Clark was not only a Marxist, but an active supporter and fundraiser for a terrorism.

Terrorists always believe that their attacks on innocent civilians are justified in pursuit of their political or ideological aims, and that they are resisting oppression of one sort or another. The Christchurch gunman was no different.

The end does not justify the means.

If someone who was held up as an authority on extremism had supported and fundraised for the KKK or another far right organisation, however long ago, I feel confident that there would be a powerful drive – championed by Clark himself – for that person to be deplatformed and suffer other social and financial consequences, and not to attend the Counterterrorism Hui, as Clark did last year.    

In a followup post, Moses counters a response by Clark.

It seems incredible that Clark, an organiser of this group at the time, and someone whose name is on the pamphlet, would have thought that the PFLP had denounced violence. The PFLP has never renounced vioence. If we are to believe Clark we would have to believe he never read any of the literature the Party put out, and that he had put his name on. Or that he never read the slogan on the T-shirt he and his comrades were selling, or seen the images on the T-shirt of armed militants.

Or, in fact, that he never read his own post on the Fightback website from 2009 when he said “All profits raised by the campaign go directly to the PFLP to help fund all aspects of their struggle against the Zionist state of Israel both politically and militarily.” [emphasis added]

His claim that the PFLP never received funds from the Workers Party is questionable also. Was the Party lying when they announced, in 2010, that it was donating $1,000 to the PFLP, raised mostly through the sale of PFLP t-shirts? According to a former comrade (who wished to remain anonymous) a payment was sent to the group and a second one was forthcoming until the Christchurch Earthquake struck, and the individual in charge of the money dissapeared with it.

For once, a thief may have done some good.

And as for the book itself, Damien Grant reviews it:

My real problem with this book isn’t its sloppiness, dreary re-telling of uninteresting internet encounters, or uninteresting prose; it is how it wraps vile ideologies around decent people with either careless or intentional ambiguity.

Chris Lynch is a popular Christchurch journalist with what appears to be a mainstream, mildly conservative world view. He interviewed then New Conservative deputy leader Elliot Ikilei over Ikilei’s opposition to the UN compact on refugees. 

No credible author can consider either Lynch or Ikilei as part of a hostile underworld of extremists, and yet in Clark’s re-telling of a mundane interview a cloud forms over both men. “It is concerning,” Lynch is quoted. “[O]ur friends across the ditch, why are they not signed up to it? … Makes you wonder.” 

You can disagree with Ikilei, and Lynch, but what is Clark trying to achieve here? Why are these two conventional gentlemen woven into a narrative about a “hostile underworld of extremists”?

If the extremely moderate Chris Lynch has made it into a book on extremism, I’m surprised I’m not featured also!

Chris Hipkins announced for so called measures around lobbying reform. They are:

• Requesting the Speaker remove swipe-card access to Parliament for business, non-government sector and union representatives 
• Offering Government support to third-party lobbyists to establish a voluntary code of conduct 
• A refreshed Cabinet Manual being published this month sets clear expectations for Ministers in relation to conduct and decisions when considering future employment 
• Starting long-term work on policy options to regulate lobbying

These range from trivial to insignificant.

The fourth point is merely announcing there might be a discussion document some stage after the election.

The third point is almost meaningless. It just says if a Minister is planning to jump ship and become a lobbyist, they should not make decisions that might benefit their future employer. This is not the issue. The issue is a Cabinet Minister with their detailed knowledge of every Cabinet discussion on every issue, should not be able to become a lobbyist within weeks of leaving Cabinet. There should be a stand-down period.

The second point is also meaningless. It means they will write a letter to the lobbyists asking them to do something.

The first point is probably the most laughable. The swipe cards (I have one) merely means you don’t have to go through the security scanner and wait at reception for a staffer to come down to walk you down a corridor to an office. Rather than make it harder for people to access Parliament, they should be making it easier and granting swipe cards to anyone who is a regular visitor. All this change will do (if the Speaker agrees) is mean staffers have to walk to and from their office more often when they have a visitor for their MP.

This announcement is so laughably weak, it shows how desperate the Government is to try and look like they are doing something, even if something is dreamed up in ten minutes.

I don’t personally think there is an issue with staffers (not Ministers) going on to become lobbyists. But having lobbyists parachute in to be the PMs Chief of Staff is an issue. Both Ardern and Hipkins have done this. Nothing in the announcement today will change that.

The Herald reports:

Nearly 40 years after a caretaker at a union building was killed picking up a suitcase with a bomb in it, the chief suspect has died. A never-before-released transcript reveals what the man told police, writes Sam Sherwood. …

However, circumstantial evidence did point to one person, marine engineer Edgar Kidman, a former army sergeant with experience in handling explosives including gelignite.

The Herald on Sunday can reveal Kidman died in May 2021 with a cloud of suspicion hanging over his head. And for the first time, a transcript of his interview with police from the time can be shared. …

The device was wrapped in newspaper and fragments from the scene were identified as coming from the June 18, 1977 edition of the Evening Post, specifically pages 9, 10, 19 and 20. …

Police also believed there were two bottles of accelerant, likely petrol, inside a Teal brand soft drink bottle and a bottle sealed with an Asti Riccadonna cork. There was also an Eveready 6-volt battery. …

In August 1984, police searched Kidman’s home in Breaker Bay. Inside the home, police found four Teal brand soft-drink bottles, electrical tape, a packet of detonators, safety fuses and a torch without its battery.

Also inside was the Evening Post dated June 18, 1977. Pages, 9, 10, 19 and 20, which were found inside the suitcase, were among the pages missing.

This is not proof beyond reasonable doubt, but certainly well beyond the balance of probabilities.

Very very few people have experience in explosives in NZ. What is the chance that at one house you have someone who:

1. Had experience with explosives
2. Had the same brand of soft drink bottle as used in the bomb
3. Had a missing battery, where one was used in the bomb
4. Had detonators at home
5. Had a copy of the very same newspaper as used in the bomb, with missing pages that corresponded to those found in the bomb

The last one especially takes it from plausible to very likely he did it.

Nicholas Kristof writes in the NY Times:

I opposed the Iraq war. I also covered it and reported on the misuse of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. I hammered Bush for the eight years he was in office over Iraq, torture, Guantánamo, Darfur, reproductive health and so much more. And the best policy by an American president? I’d argue that it was something else that Bush did that constitutes his most important legacy and that we in the media under-covered. At the same time that Bush was planning the Iraq war, he was also starting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global effort to turn the tide of the AIDS epidemic. PEPFAR continues to this day and has saved 25 million lives worldwide so far. Think about that: 25 million lives. What can compare with that? When Bush rolled out this initiative, he wasn’t reacting to pressure from Democrats, and he didn’t gain any political benefit. The American public is still mostly unaware of PEPFAR. My take is that we in the media bungled things in both directions: We were insufficiently skeptical of the Iraq war in the run-up to it, and then we were insufficiently attuned to something that Bush did that was actually heroic.I know, I know. This messes with our heads. How can I, as a good liberal, accept that the most important humanitarian initiative by the United States in modern times wasn’t organized by some progressive Democrat whom I admire but rather by an evangelical Republican whom I disagree with on almost everything?

25 million lives saved is a pretty good legacy.

In 2017 Bill English committed National to building a new Dunedin Hospital, with completion between 2024 and 2027.

Labour said that was too long and they promised that construction would begin no later than 2020 and be completed by 2023

Radio New Zealand reports that the completion date has now been delayed to 2029.

There seems to be a bit of a pattern to this, eh.

Shane Reti points out:

HealthNZ is now apparently unable to report on staff vacancies in emergency departments, National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says.

“New Zealand is facing a workforce shortage, and it is one of the most important issues facing the health sector right now. It is simply not credible that HealthNZ do not know how many emergency department staff vacancies there currently are.

“Late last year, the previous Health Minister was able to send a detailed breakdown of staff vacancies at every single emergency department. But recently HealthNZ through the current Health Minister effectively said they do not have the data.

“None of this makes sense. According to this Labour Government one of the key factors of creating the health restructure was to centralise data and decision making. After spending half a billion dollars, key data is suddenly nowhere to be found.

It is bizarre. The data should, in theory, now be able to be collated by one person, not 23 people. Yet under the old system we could find out this health data, and under this new expensive system, we can’t.

I saw on Twitter that after the recent SNP election, the UK now has:

• A Hindu Prime Minister
• A Muslim First Secretary of Scotland
• A Buddhist Home Secretary

None of them are there because of any quotas or because they are Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist. They just happen to be from diverse backgrounds.

But it reflects well on the UK that it is such a great melting pot of different cultures and faiths. Can you imagine many or any other countries where this would be the case?

Media have reported that Today FM has effectively been closed down.

This is sad for two reasons.

The first is that a lot of people are losing their jobs. I know a fair few of them, and they are good people.

The second reason is the fewer media outlets in NZ, the less diversity of opinion we get. I want more media, not less media.

At the end of the day it was a commercial decision of course. Not enough people were listening, which means not enough revenue from advertising.

The Jerusalem Post reported:

Prime Minister Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Monday evening that he was temporarily freezing the bill that would alter the makeup of the Judicial Appointments Committee and was willing to give a “real opportunity to real dialogue” over the government’s judicial reforms, which have thrown the country into turmoil and unprecedented civil unrest.

I’ve been following this issue with interest because what Netanyahu has proposed is pretty much the status quo in New Zealand, so have been bemused by why it has caused such huge division. It might be because it is him proposing it, and that he is facing trial himself – which is a bad look.

But I was surprised by how anti-democratic the status quo is.

In New Zealand every Judge is appointed by the Government of the Day. The Attorney-General or Prime Minister appoints them. In Israel they are appointed by a nine member committee that has two Ministers on it, two MPs (one Govt/one Oppn), three Supreme Court Judges and two lawyers from the Bar Association. So the judiciary and legal profession have the majority on the committee and can appoint judges against the wishes of the Government. The Government basically has little say in who is appointed.

Now for the last 30 years or so, the public have voted for centre-right Governments. But the legal profession and judiciary are fairly heavily centre-left. So for the left, the judiciary is their one remaining source of power, while to the right the judiciary is a self-appointing elite out of touch with the country. Hence the conflict.

Now this would not be as big an issue if the judiciary merely interpreted laws made by the Knesset. But despite the fact there is no written constitution, the judiciary gave itself the power to strike down laws that it regards as incompatible with what are called the basic laws.

Finally you have the odd situation of the Attorney-General of Israel. Despite the name, they are not a democratically elected person. In Israel the role is almost a merger of both Attorney-General and Solictor-General. They head up the legal system and are the sole advisor to the Government. Their decisions are binding on the entire Government. Recently they blocked the National Security Minister from sacking a regional police chief. The AG can decide not to defend the Government in court. This role is incredibly powerful and appointed for a six year term so one Government can appoint someone who will have power over the next Government.

There are arguments for and against the status quo, but it is a very unusual arrangement.

Stuff reports:

One in three staff at Te Pūkenga don’t believe there is a future for them at the new mega polytech, while the vast majority surveyed would not recommend working there to whānau and friends.

The national tertiary provider carried out its fourth employee questionnaire in November 2022, with 50% (4311) of staff responding.

Staff were then asked “how likely are you to recommend Te Pūkenga as a place of work for your whānau and friends”.

The answered generated an Employee Net Promoter Score (ENPS), a measurement used by the business community.

A score above zero is considered good. The worst score is -100.

For the organisation as a whole, Te Pūkenga scored -59, while every polytech received a score of less than zero.

This merger was Hipkins’ pet project. It was not recommended to him. He ignored all the advice about maybe doing some regional mergers and decided to centralise the entire industry.

The result is a cost blowout in the hundreds of millions, fewer students completing courses and staff so unhappy that almost none of them recommend it as a place to work.

What a huge success!

Chris Hipkins has announced:

I have ordered a government inquiry under S6(3) of the Inquiries Act 2013 in relation to the e-mail sent by the Hon Stuart Nash in 2020 and its subsequent handling by the offices of Hon Stuart Nash and Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern.

I accept the assurances of those involved that genuine mistakes were made with no improper motives, but I also accept that it is important for the public to have confidence in how the Government operates. For this reason I have appointed former Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer, to conduct a government inquiry, to report to me by 31 May 2023.

I’m pleased to see the the PM has agreed to an independent inquiry, It simply wasn’t credible to keep claiming that there was nothing to be investigated.

I would have preferred it was a public inquiry, rather than a government inquiry, as a public inquiry’s report must be tabled in the House of Representatives while a government inquiry only goes to the commissioning Minister.

But I think it is inevitable that the report would be publicly released, so it isn’t a huge deal. I think the PM should get credit for his decision to have an independent inquiry.

CNN report:

Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time, one source told CNN.

I have blogged previously that this case appears very weak compared to other cases. But until we see the actual charges and evidence, we won’t know.

The case I am most interested in is the classified document case. Not so much the possession of them, but the probability that Trump lied to his own lawyers (who unknowingly lied to the FBI) that he had returned them all. The fact that the courts have compelled his lawyers to break client attorney privilege and testify suggests there is very strong evidence in that case.

So anyway I await with interest the actual evidence. Unlike some who are so blinded by their devotion or hatred they think Trump is automatically innocent or guilty, I am keeping an open mind on this case. But as I said previously many legal experts have said it appears relatively weak.

Carl Bates, the National Party candidate for the Whanganui electorate has posted the following on his Facebook Page:

The Whanganui Chronicle recently had a worrying story about the Te Pūkenga UCOL Whanganui campus having axed four courses because of low enrolment numbers. The issues at UCOL are actually worse than that; enrolments this year are down by more than 22%. UCOL’s Whanganui campus was absorbed into Te Pūkenga during 2022, and decisions about the viability of Whanganui are made in Hamilton, where Te Pūkenga is based.

From 2003 to 2007 I served on the UCOL Board. Board meetings rotated around the campuses to ensure that Board members knew what was happening at a local level when they were making decisions. We received advice from locally-based management staff and regularly met with Whanganui stakeholders at a governance level.

I am not prepared to stand by whilst this Whanganui asset is further downgraded. I have consulted with business and civic leaders who are likewise worried about UCOL’s downward trajectory. It’s not that long ago that the Whanganui School of Design, under the leadership of Professor Hazel Gamec was considered to be one of the top ten schools of its kind globally.

Today, I am launching a petition via the National Party website demanding a return to localized control at Te Pūkenga’s Whanganui campus. Labour is ignoring the massively negative impact Te Pūkenga’s centralisation has had, and continues to have, on provincial cities like Whanganui. We must send the Government a strong message; only by showing the Government the overwhelming opposition to their broken reforms can we stop them. But I need your support.

A National government will disestablish Te Pūkenga if we are in Government later this year, returning autonomy and decision-making to individual Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics and their communities. National’s Tertiary Education spokeswoman is Penny Simmonds, who for 23 years was CEO of Southland Institute of Technology, one of the country’s most successful tertiary providers .

Please consider signing this petition, and sharing it within your networks. Let’s send a message to our government that their one-size-fits-all Wellington-knows-best approach to tertiary education is not working, and to demand a return to localised management for UCOL Whanganui.

https://www.national.org.nz/makeucollocal

Last week Te Pūkenga let slip that merging the IT systems of the 16 constituent institutions will cost an eye-watering $295 million over four years, part of an overall request for additional funding totaling $422.6 million over four years. We only know the details of this because the business case was accidentally published online before being taken down.

That prompted Penny Simmonds to say “As the Chief Executive for the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) for 23 years prior to entering parliament in 2020, I know how misguided and inappropriate the establishment of Te Pūkenga has been and the waste of money in doing so has been heart-breaking.”  

Despite opposition from right across the country, then-Education Minister Chris Hipkins pushed on with the Te Pūkenga reform, clearly believing that Labour knows best. But in doing so, he has put vocational education at risk for hundreds of young New Zealanders.

It’s time to push back against Te Pūkenga. Please sign Carl Bates’ petition, and share it with your networks. It’s Whanganui today, but it may be your region under threat tomorrow.

We have rock solid proof that the Government has been denying OIA requests as out of scope, when they were beyond any dispute within scope. It is possibly no coincidence that the PM’s Deputy Chief of Staff who approved this, was also named by Dr Sharma as taking part in a seminar for Labour MPs on how to avoid disclosing information under the OIA.

A proper inquiry should examine the following issues:

1. Who was involved in the decision to declare the Nash e-mail as not falling within the OIA, and what was their reasoning?
2. Who decided to redact the e-mail being sending it to the Ombudsman, and what parts were redacted?
3. Why did the Ombudsman’s Office accept a redacted e-mail, and not insist in seeing the full e-mail before rejecting the appeal?
4. Have any other OIA requests to Ministers in the last five years been improperly rejected as having been out of scope, when they were not? I have been informed of at least one other specific request which was improperly denied as existing.
5. Did the two senior staffers in the PMs Office communicate in any way that substance of the Nash e-mail to the Prime Minister, the PMs Chief of Staff, the Deputy PM, DPMC, the Cabinet Office etc. If not, why not.
6. Did any person discuss with Stuart Nash before 2023, that the e-mail he sent was inappropriate and he should desist from further ones
7. Have the actions of the PMs Office staffers complied with the public service code of conduct for ministerial staffers, specifically the requirement to act lawfully and ethically, and using official resources and information carefully and only for proper purposes.

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn highlights why this needs to be an independent inquiry by a KC or Judge.

I have two comments here. The first is that there seems to be no reason whatsoever for this request to have been escalated to the Prime Minister’s office, and it seems to be another example of Labour’s informational control-freakery. The fact that it was the PM’s staff who ruled the email “out of scope” because it wasn’t “received in his capacity as a minister” also echoes Gaurav Sharma’s claims about the PM’s office instructing MPs about how to hide information from the OIA by claiming it was received in a party capacity. (In this case its strictly false, because information from Cabinet discussions can only be held in a Ministerial capacity; the PM’s staff’s willingness to overlook this calls every OIA judgement they have ever made into question, and suggests they are systematically illegally withholding information on political grounds. Unfortunately, the Ombudsman can’t do anything about it, because OIA investigations can only be in relation to a specific request, while Ministers have ensured that the Ombudsmen’s Act, which allows own-motion inquiries into OIA practices, doesn’t apply to them. Convenient, isn’t it?)

I/S also states:

My second comment is that this is a perfect example of why the OIA needs criminal penalties for deliberate violations. Canada does this, with the Access to Information Act having a penalty of two years imprisonment for those who, with intent to frustrate a request, conceal, falsify or destroy records. We should do the same, to deter such behaviour and enable public servants to stand up to illegal demands from their political masters. But as with the Ombudsmen’s Act, the problem is getting Ministers to apply the law to themselves…

I agree. The OIA needs more teeth.

Either way, its clear that the announced review into what else Nash might have corruptly disclosed isn’t enough; we also need a full investigation into Labour’s handling of OIA requests. And if this government won’t do it, I’d hope the next one will.

That’s a good idea. National and ACT should announce they will launch an inquiry if they become Government.

The latest revelations around the Nash e-mail has taken it from merely an issue of bad judgment, to corrupt behaviour involving the Prime Minister’s Office.

Newsroom reports:

On June 8, 2021, Newsroom made a request to Nash’s office under the Official Information Act for “All written correspondence and details of the nature and substance of any other communication since the start of 2020” between Nash and 19 of his political donors. Included on the list of donors was Troy Bowker. Given that the June 2020 email to Bowker concerned discussions Nash was having in his capacity as a minister, it appears that the June 2020 email fell within the scope of Newsroom’s request.

In August 2021, however, Nash’s office responded, “I hold nothing that is within the scope of your request as the Act relates only to information provided to me as minister. I must therefore refuse your request under section 18(e) of the Official Information Act as the information does not exist or cannot be found.”

Failing to disclose documents within the scope of a valid request without justification is a breach of the Official Information Act. 

There is basically zero doubt that the law was broken here. When I heard the e-mail was deemed out of scope of the OIA request, I was very interested as to what the request was for. Was it a very general request for material on rental policy, or was it specific.

The request was as specific as you can get. It was for all correspondence between Nash and his donors. This was an e-mail between Nash and two donors. It was obviously exactly the sort of information Newsroom was seeking to obtain.

The Government decided it was out of scope as it was Nash communicating in his capacity as an MP, not a Minister.

Now sometimes there can be a grey area between whether a Minister is acting as a Minister or MP, but this is not one of them. Nash was referring to a decision made by Cabinet, and even detailing discussions around the Cabinet table and how different Ministers voted. It is impossible to say this is a communication in his capacity as an MP, not a Minister. MPs do not attend Cabinet, only Ministers.

But while Nash signed off on not releasing the e-mail, this was a decision taken jointly with Jacinda Ardern’s office.

Two staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office, deputy Chief of Staff Holly Donald and a senior advisor were aware of the original OIA

They were consulted on the OIA and concurred that the e-mail was out of scope. No one with any experience with the OIA could in good faith believe it was out of scope. They conspired to invent a reason not to release it.

And the reason they didn’t release it, is it was explosive. It was proof that a Cabinet Minister was e-mailing two people details of discussion and decisions in Cabinet.

Now this is the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister. There are broadly only three possible explanations for what happened.

1. The Deputy Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister is so incompetent and derelict in her job that she didn’t think it was necessary to tell the Prime Minister (or the CoS) that one of her Ministers was sending e-mails to donor giving them a detailed description of Cabinet discussions and voting.
2. The Deputy Chief of Staff realised how explosive this was, and deliberately decided not to tell the PM or CoS so there was plausible deniability
3. The Deputy Chief of Staff did in fact tell the PM or the Chief of Staff

But it gets even worse. From the RNZ timeline:

1 March: Stuart Nash receives a letter from the Ombudsman regarding an investigation into his response to the 8 92021 OIA.

17 March: Stuart Nash’s office drafts a response to the Ombudsman and shares it with the Prime Minister’s Office. This did not include a copy of the 5 June 2020 email but did include a reference to withholding documents under s9(2)(j). The Prime Minister’s Office did not reply.

29 March: Stuart Nash replies to the Ombudsman including a redacted version of the 5 June 2020 email. Includes an explanation that the email was in his capacity as a Labour Member of Parliament rather than in his capacity as Minister.

30 March: Office of the Ombudsman responds to Nash’s office, acknowledging receipt of his response.

25 May: Office of the Ombudsman emails Stuart Nash’s office saying they would not be pursuing the complaint and the investigation was closed.

They sent the Ombudsman a redacted version?? You are not meant to redact anything to the Ombudsman. They obviously hid the substance which would have shown the e-mail clearly was in his capacity as a Minister. So the PMs Office and Nash’s office conspired again to hide the full e-mail from the Ombudsman. That is appalling.

I suspect and hope the Chief Ombudsman launches an inquiry into this.

But the issue is not just the breaches of the OIA. It is also about how the PM’s Deputy Chief of Staff knew what was going on and allegedly never told anyone.

I think we need a full inquiry into this led by a QC with powers to compel testimony and potential perjury charges for anyone who gives false testimony. I simply do not believe that two senior staffers in the PMs Office knew about the e-mail and did not tell anyone.

Labour has announced that it will start construction on a second harbour crossing by 2029.

Sadly some people will fall for this. The old saying is you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool some of the people all of the time.

Let’s look at their record:

1. Promised Light Rail to Mt Roskill would be completed by 2021. It is 2023 and they now say it might be complete by 2031.
2. Promised 100,000 Kiwibuild houses by 2028. It is 2023 and they have built 1,599 or 1.6% of their target. At this rate they will hit 100,000 in the year 2305.
3. In 2017 Labour promised the new Dunedin Hospital would start construction by 2020 and be finished by 2023. It is 2023 and they are now saying it will be complete by 2029.

Why would you possibly believe them this time?