What's Going On With the Culture of Secrecy in NZ Government?

First we had the revelations (during the tenure of the past government) that Labour was holding "educational" sessions to train government Ministers and relevant personnel in how to skirt around Official Information Act (OIA) requests from the public.

This week brought two further revelations about more facts and findings that have - at Ministerial level - been withheld from the New Zealand public.

According to a Radio New Zealand report, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello received a serious butt-kicking from the Chief Ombudsman and was instructed to apologise for trying to keep tobacco and vaping policy documents secret.

The RNZ coverage states: "Chief Ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier took the rare step of forcing Costello to apologise to RNZ and to Otago University Professor of Public Health Janet Hoek (NB: the two parties who sought the information under the OIA) for her handling of Official Information Act (OIA) requests.

"In his ruling, Boshier said Costello's actions in withholding the information were 'unreasonable and contrary to law'.

"Costello came under intense scrutiny earlier this year after RNZ revealed that her public statements on tobacco and vaping policy were contradicted by official documents she had sent to health officials." RNZ's background coverage can be found here.

Radio New Zealand revealed how, in late December 2023, RNZ and Hoek made an OIA request, asking for "all documents sent, held or received by Costello relating to tobacco control and vaping policy".

But Costello refused to release any documents.

So RNZ took the matter to the Ombudsman. And the results of his resultant investigation show deep concerns about Costello's decisions, actions and ethics.

The apology she was instructed by the Ombudsman to tender to Radio New Zealand were (in my opinion as author of this blog), insincere, forced, and relied on the only thing she could fall back on by way of an excuse: lack of attention to detail, lack of any appreciation for the need for thoroughness in her role, and complete incompetency.

But even that doesn't explain her intentional withholding of information from the public and her related decisions to disingenuously and arrogantly avert her Ministerial OIA obligations. Nor her weak attempt to throw an identified staffer under the bus in a subsequent Newstalk ZB interview.

But Wait There's More . . . And It's All In the Course of One Week

Then we had the a group representing concerned members of the teaching profession - New Zealand Teachers Speaking Out with Science (NZTSOS) - reporting that they had just uncovered a Ministry of Health ‘Science and Insights’ report from October 2021, the content of which would challenge the Labour government's claims about the significant risks of Covid-19 transmission in schools and healthcare "settings".

That, in turn, of course, undermines the entire rationale for vaccine mandates in the health and education sectors.

But when NZTOS and their medical sector counterpart, New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science (NZDOS), and associated sector workers, had challenged the vaccine mandates in court in March 2022, the Crown witnesses, Chris Hipkins, Rachel Mackay, Dr Ian Town and Dr Ashley Bloomfield, appear to have withheld all knowledge of the report.

NZTSOS is now seeking to appeal to the Supreme Court, citing a miscarriage of justice due to these omissions.

Then we had New Zealand First's bringing to the public's attention the "word on the street" (or the word on the water), that (according to a "tweet" by the Party) the interisland ferry, the Aratere, had run aground last month apparently due to some crew member/members not being able to turn off the autopilot button/switch . . . a communication NZ First was roundly condemned for, both by fellow Parliamentarians and the media.

However, a document subsequently leaked to the New Zealand Herald revealed that the cause of the Aratere running aground did , in fact, appear to be that the autopilot button was accidentally pressed and that the crew didn't know how to turn it off.

All this secrecy and the hiding of information is a concerning culture that is obviously a real concern. My suspicion is that it's a culture that's always been there, and that is only now being challenged.

Stay tuned.

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