Stuart Nash was sacked as a minister after the emergence of an email withheld when sought through the OIA. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Stuart Nash was sacked as a minister after the emergence of an email withheld when sought through the OIA. Photo / Mark Mitchell
ANALYSIS
There is a depressing familiarity in the failure of the Official Information Act to bring to light the Stuart Nash email which got him sacked.
Instead, it was withheld and considered “out of scope” of the OIA request that sought it in 2021. The email was withheld by Nash’s office and withheld by the Prime Minister’s Office, which reviewed the material.
It’s unfathomable that an email which clearly showed information Nash gained as a minister - and could only have gained as a minister - was considered to not relate to his ministerial activities.
If those at the heart of political power held closely the purposes of the OIA law, it would have been released. Indeed, it should have been released.
In my opinion, the OIA is as fit for purpose as it was when it was written. The words that make the law are - as far as legislation goes - clearly written.
That is particularly the case when reading the purposes of the Act that serve as a beacon of guidance for a healthy, functioning democracy.
Those purposes tell us information should be made available to allow the people of New Zealand to have “more effective participation in the making and administration of laws and policies” and “to promote the accountability of Ministers of the Crown and officials”.
In doing so, the law says, it will serve to “enhance respect for the law and to promote the good government of New Zealand”.
That’s as high-minded as any piece of legislation you will read. It is exactly why Nash’s email should have been released by his office and certainly why it should have been released once it made its way to the Prime Minister’s Office.
As we know, it didn’t. And what we should appreciate is that this is not a new thing. Ministerial offices - all the way to the top of the Beehive - have for years failed to connect those high-minded ideals with action.
This was the case in 2014 when the Herald made a series of OIA requests to the Prime Minister’s Office for details regarding the Speargun project being considered by the Government Communications Security Bureau.
Former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Key. Photo / NZME
This was the plan to introduce a form of mass surveillance into the country. It was a plan that ran head first into the Prime Minister’s promise that he would resign if the country engaged in mass surveillance of its population.
When the documents eventually emerged in 2017, Key was long gone and so was the opportunity for “accountability of Ministers of the Crown”. Also gone was the opportunity to “enhance respect for the law” and “to promote the good government of New Zealand”.
Rather than seeing the law as a beacon of guidance in the dark, the OIA has been perverted into a lighthouse subsequent administrations have used to avoid dangerous ground.
And this is no particular criticism of Key’s administration. In the years since the Act came into force - it will be 40 years in 2024 - each subsequent administration has plumbed new depths as they cycle through their years in power.
As clear as the wording of the OIA is, there is another mantra which is more closely observed. That is, “every day denied is a victory”. That’s to say, push away today’s troubles until they sit beyond the next election.
Every now and again, the Quixotic karma of politics ankle-taps this strategy. With hindsight, it’s a likely bet Labour would have liked to have sacked Nash in 2021 and carried the political cost on its former leader’s waning political capital rather than have Hipkins feel the hurt in an election year.
In the Nash fallout, National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis offered her view on what had happened. She said the Government “broke the law to keep that letter from the New Zealand public”. It’s the sort of big talk heard from Jacinda Ardern in 2017 when she promised Labour would be the most open and transparent government ever.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon and Deputy leader Nicola Willis. Photo / Jed Bradley
She said: “This Government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.”
Should National succeed, Willis invites this blunt assessment to be visited on its own ministers - that when they play with OIA legislation as if it were a game, they are law-breakers who see accountability and public oversight mattering less than their own political success.
It’s a perverse situation which suggests a “greater good” argument - that the OIA law be broken to preserve the political futures of those who make the laws because ultimately, they would have it, the country will be better off. It’s a thought process that actively excludes the “people of New Zealand”, who sit at the centre of the OIA law.
If National succeed this year, will they be any better? History suggests it will set a new low, following the trend of every government since the OIA was passed to shine a light on political actions and decision-making, promoting accountability and public involvement in our democracy.
Here’s hoping, instead, they become the most open and transparent government ever.
