Fran O’Sullivan: The too-high price of speaking your mind

Stuart Nash has paid the price of speaking out, but is that price too high? Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

This appears to be such a dangerous time to speak openly that even some of the freest-thinking are starting to question the wisdom of “going out” — even in private.

There is a high penalty for stating the obvious.

You could be sacked and sent to political purgatory, as in the case of former public board boss Rob Campbell, who denigrated the National Party leader’s stance on co-governance. Or the naughty stool in the case of Cabinet Minister Stuart Nash, whose prime sin was speaking out loud and thus being seen to misuse his influence in reaction to a questionable court judgment. Then there is the bizarre re-education of media hosts this week who protested on-air the use of the term “pregnant people”. Enough said.

Nash was fired from the police portfolio for venting to NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking that he had criticised a court decision and called a “mate” to encourage him to appeal it.

That “mate” was Police Commissioner Andrew Coster.

It did not matter that Coster did not appeal. Nor that Nash was not Police Minister at the time.

But he had crossed a line. Broken Cabinet rules. The upshot is he has been stripped of his police portfolio and then dumped to the bottom of the Cabinet rankings yesterday after two earlier transgressions came to light.

Did Prime Minister Chris Hipkins exercise sound Cabinet governance himself in the way he handled Nash’s transgressions?

Nash sniffed the wind and offered up his resignation from the police portfolio. Hipkins accepted it, noting that he would have asked for it in any event.

This is the accepted way of working through such issues where both parties recognise that things have got out of hand.

The Prime Minister put Nash on final warning yesterday after news came to light of two other incidents involving his conduct.

The first was the revelation that the Solicitor-General had considered prosecuting him for contempt over public comments he made back in the day after the arrest of Eli Epiha in relation to the killing of police constable Matthew Hunt.

Crown Law confirmed that the Solicitor-General had instead recommended to Attorney-General David Parker that he reprimand Nash for “unacceptable” comments.

Nash had also approached the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) about an immigration case involving a health professional. Nash was acting Napier MP at the time and did not use the “established process for ministers and MPs to advocate in an immigration case”.

Said Hipkins yesterday: “Having considered the thresholds used by previous prime ministers, I have decided the appropriate penalty is to demote Stuart Nash and place him on a final warning.

“This demotion reflects both his poor judgment on process and his failure to alert me to these past instances. I have repeated that point to him and made clear that any further lapses will result in his dismissal as a minister. As I have said, his actions reflect poor judgment, but the specifics of each incident do not warrant dismissal.”

The fact that the whole affair was self-inflicted rather than coming to light as the result of deep investigations by the Opposition or journalistic digging both saved Nash’s scalp and gave Hipkins room to manoeuvre.

He certainly was not going to give National leader Chris Luxon or Act leader David Seymour a cheap victory if he could help it.

Journalists will bang on about the minutiae of the Cabinet Manual. But what if Nash had a point?

The issue he vented about on radio related to a Southland farmer who lost his firearms licence in 2017 but did not give up his guns, magazines or ammunition as required. As Nash told Hosking, “I’ve seen a couple of judgments, and actually one I phoned up the Police Commissioner and said, ‘surely you’re going to appeal this?’.

“This bloke didn’t have a licence, had illegal firearms, had illegal ammunition and had guns without a licence and he got home detention, I think that was a terrible decision by the judge.”

The separation of powers between the Cabinet, the police and judiciary is a long-held tradition. But it seems to me in each of those areas where Nash did cross a line, others — particularly media and opposition politicians — should be campaigning for tougher calls or in the case of MBIE, a more efficient process.

Just yesterday, another errant soul turned a gun on police in an incident in Henderson.

As we have seen this week, the police haven’t always been open with the facts.

It is embarrassing — including for Hipkins, who had the Police portfolio at the time — that an analysis of ram-raid data now shows the true number of offences per month is almost double what police first estimated.

This points to a clear need for a review of the police.

Nash does wear his heart on his sleeve. But there will be many in the public whose verdict will be “good on him”.