Internal documents reveal how ministers worked to keep sweeping pay equity changes secret until the last minute – a move designed to prevent a surge in claims and protect the Government balance sheet.
In emails and briefings, the ministers and theirstaff acknowledged their plans would bypass public scrutiny, extinguish existing claims and potentially breach people’s rights.
They pushed on anyway, guarding the release of information so the news would not leak out before the bill was introduced in May this year.
The announcement was sudden and the bill passed under urgency.
It halted existing claims and raised the threshold for proving work had been historically undervalued to support a claim. Claims then had to start again under the new threshold.
The bill halted existing claims and raised the threshold for proving undervalued work. Photo / Jason Dorday
It was revealed in the Budget that the savings from tightening the regime amounted to about $12.8 billion over the next four years.
The documents, released to RNZ under the Official Information Act, revealed ministerial meetings, including one involving the Prime Minister, were carefully managed, with instructions to withhold their proactive diary release under confidentiality provisions.
One email from Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden’s office instructed officials to manually remove digital access to cabinet papers, warning that leaving the default settings in place “will give access to ministers but also SPSs [senior private secretaries] and some ministerial advisers. So you might want to remove that and we can add individual named ministers instead”.
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden's office kept details of pay equity changes under tight wraps. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Another memo described how hard copies were hand-delivered to ministers’ offices to avoid creating digital trails.
“If you really need a soft copy, I can email it through,” wrote an official from the office of van Velden.
“For context, I swear I’m not being weirdly difficult – this was the method of distribution that has been advised.”
The strategy was internally referred to as “Project Ten”. A comprehensive communications pack was prepared in advance, to be released only after the bill had been introduced and passed.
“We recommend that any announcements or statements about the proposed amendments must be made after the introduction of the bill,” one paper said.
“This is because there is a risk of a large increase in the number of claims being raised if information about the proposed changes is made public beforehand.”
That advice was followed.
The legislation stopped 33 active claims overnight, some of which had been under way for years, and implemented a stricter legal test for future ones.
Officials stressed the need for the law to be passed in time for Budget 2025, reinforcing the cost-cutting motive.
But, they acknowledged the truncated timeline meant there was no opportunity for public submissions on the bill, a process later criticised as “particularly unusual and draconian”.
Officials also conceded limited testing and analysis of the policy proposals because of the short timeframe, and raised concerns about unintended consequences arising once the bill has been passed.
Despite the rushed process, the internal discussions reveal the Government was aware of the contentious nature of the changes.
Officials noted the proposed transitional arrangements, which “retrospectively remove and alter people’s rights”, were “most likely to be contentious” and “may engage the Human Rights Act and Bill of Rights Act”.
