Council of Trade Unions economist Craig Renney. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) wants an apology from Finance Minister Nicola Willis after what it argues is a false characterisation of an error Craig Renney made in an October press release, which ultimately saw him blocked from future Treasury briefings.
Documents now released under the Official Information Act (OIA) show that Willis’ office’s frustration at an error made in one of Renney’s press releases fed into Treasury’s decision to bar him.
Renney maintains the mistake, an inaccurate quote, was an innocent error that was quickly corrected, however Willis and her office have said the quote was “made-up” and “fabricated”.
The spat deepened this week, when the CTU saw the way Willis’ office had characterised the incident to Treasury officials in OIA documents, which are mainly emails from Willis’ office to Treasury.
The CTU and Renney want an apology from Willis for those remarks and they want Willis to back Treasury reinstating Renney’s access to certain Treasury briefings. Willis, however, is not apologising and maintains that the quote was “made-up”.
A second battle had emerged over a phone call that took place between CTU president Richard Wagstaff and Willis after the original incident.
The OIA shows Treasury officials discussing the fact that Wagstaff, Renney’s boss, had “directly spoken” to Willis, and had confirmed the quote had been “fabricated” and apologised for it. Willis’ staff use the word “fabricated” to describe Renney’s actions.
“I understand this has been acknowledged by Mr Rennie [sic] and the NZCTU,” the officials say in the documents.
However, neither Wagstaff nor Renney say this is the case – they say that while they acknowledged the quote was incorrect, they did not say it had been deliberately fabricated.
Wagstaff told the Herald the union maintains it was an editing or typographical error, rather than a deliberate attempt to make up a quote.
“I [told Willis] if it’s wrong, we’ll put it right, and that’s exactly what we did – immediately,” Wagstaff said.
“I would never suggest that we would deliberately or maliciously do something like that.”
Wagstaff agreed that if the union believed it was a deliberate fabrication on Renney’s part, disciplinary action would need to be taken against him. In this case, the union believed it was a mistake.
“There was no acknowledgement of malintent [sic],” Wagstaff said.
Willis distanced herself from the word “fabricated” when approached by the Herald.
“I stand by my public statement, so you will find that the word that is used in the email was not a word I used in my public statements. My statement was that they made up a false quote and attributed it to me. I stand by that statement,” she said.
Willis said the union was engaging in a “frankly pathetic” attempt to “rewrite history”.
“Regardless, what happened here was a statement I didn’t make [that] was attributed to me by the CTU,” Willis said.
She said that getting the quote wrong was a “far graver error” than what the CTU was accusing her of, falsely characterising the quote.
“I often disagree with Craig Renney, but I wouldn’t stoop so low as to make up something that he has said and falsely attributed to him,” Willis said.
The spat began last October when Renney was among the journalists and analysts invited to a Treasury “lock-up” for the Government’s financial statements. Lock-ups allow journalists, analysts and others with an interest in public finance a few hours to digest important Treasury publications before they are released to the public. The CTU regularly sends someone, usually Renney.
Less than an hour after the lock-up ended, the CTU published a press release which included the following: Finance Minister Nicola Willis admitted, “The accounts show the corrosive impact of low growth and low productivity ... and we are cutting back on the investments needed to lift both.” Yet there is no plan to solve this problem, Renney said.
The problem with this quotation is the quotation marks, which include words which Willis did not say, “and we are cutting back on the investments needed to lift both.”
About 50 minutes after the press release was published, Renney published the press release in a series of posts to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The posts had the quotation marks in the correct place: Finance Minister Nicola Willis admitted, “The accounts show the corrosive impact of low growth and low productivity” ... but we are cutting back on the public investments needed to lift both. There is no plan to solve this problem – only further cuts.
About three hours after the original press release was published, a corrected version was sent out, changing the offending paragraph to: Finance Minister Nicola Willis admitted, “The accounts show the corrosive impact of low growth and low productivity.” Yet there is no plan to solve this problem and we are cutting back on the investments needed to lift both, Renney said.
The emails show that Willis’ office, holding the belief that Renney had fabricated the quote, had told Treasury they did not want him attending the lock-up for Treasury’s next publication, the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update (Hyefu).
In November, a staffer from Willis’ office told Treasury that Willis’ team “don’t have any issues with organisations that have previously attended lock-ups attending ... with the exception of Craig Renney, who fabricated a quote at the FSG lock-up”.
The emails show Treasury wondering whether it would actually be possible to block Renney as he had not broken any of the lock-up rules. Treasury said it was “unclear” whether the lock-up rules were owned by the minister’s office, or whether they were the independent responsibility of Treasury.
“My concern is that otherwise when Mr Rennie [sic] and the CTU kick up a fuss, we’re unnecessarily risking Treasury’s reputation on issue that will likely look politically motivated on the part of MoF office,” one staffer said, when expressing concern that barring Renney would be problematic.
Treasury staff, amusingly, are just as prone as media to confusing the spelling of Craig Renney’s surname with the spelling of Iain Rennie, Treasury Secretary (who was not barred from the lock-up). The documents show Renney’s name spelled incorrectly throughout.
Treasury did not appear to come to a final conclusion over who had the final say over who decides lock-up attendance, itself or the Finance Minister. In the end, Treasury decided to bar Renney, not for the imbroglio over the quote but because it had decided to tighten access by removing advocacy organisations like the CTU and the Taxpayers' Union.
Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
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