When journalists use the Official Information Act as an investigative tool they are accepting rules made by Parliament for the public good. A considered, authorised release of material may be preferable to the haphazard reporting of part of a story. But the system relies on officials acting in good faith. TV3's Eugene Bingham writes in this newspaper today of a case that raises serious questions about the attitude of senior police.
The case arises from the altering of burglary statistics in an area of the Counties-Manukau Police District, reported by the Herald on Sunday in July. When Bingham saw our story he suspected his request for the same information more than two years earlier had not been handled honestly. Bingham, who previously worked for the New Zealand Herald, is dogged and scrupulously fair. When he had received an anonymous tip that burglaries had been reclassified as lesser offences in Counties-Manukau south he asked the district commander for any documents relating to such allegations. The district commander invited him in for a discussion "to clarify the scope of the request". The discussion was amicable, the seriousness of the allegation acknowledged, an internal investigation was underway and Bingham was told he would be kept informed.
He kept in touch with the subject through 2012 but was busy on other stories in 2013. In April this year he reminded the district commander he was still waiting for the result of his request. Three months later our story appeared. We did not come by it from official channels and there is no suggestion we were used to spoil the story Bingham was planning for TV3. Indeed, we knew nothing of what he was doing until, acting on a tip, we asked for and received a job sheet filed by the officer who reviewed the crime figures in 2012.
It referred to a discussion of Bingham's official information request between the district commander, and assistant commissioner of police and Deputy Commissioner Mike Bush - now the Commissioner of Police.
According to the job sheet, the district commander was advised to "let the request sit and when and if [Bingham] followed it up the matter would be addressed then." Bush says he did not give that direction - as a former district commissioner of Counties-Manukau during part of the period in question, he was wary of a perceived conflict of interest. But if the direction was given in his presence he ought to have stopped it. It was contrary to the letter, and certainly to the spirit, of the Official Information Act. It is not conduct the Government should accept from its most senior police.