PM Chris Hipkins demotes Stuart Nash to the lowest Cabinet ranking. Video / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
Stuart Nash’s latest stint as Police Minister was a short one. Good.
His call to the Police Commissioner about the outcome of a trial, and what the police might do about it, might be seen as a misjudgement if it weren’t for Nash boasting about it, whichshows he was bafflingly unaware of the seriousness of the matter. Given that, he should not be Police Minister, and probably not a minister at all.
While this spectacular own goal is something to behold as a spectacle, there are broader lessons here around corruption, its influence, and the importance of defending against it.
The Police Commissioner quite rightly took no action on the call from Nash, saying police independence is paramount. He also said he saw Nash’s phone call as a politician “venting”. The Commissioner’s view on that is almost certainly correct. But National, sensing a political opportunity, pounced. Prime Minister Hipkins responded. Nash got his marching orders.
To some, this might look like an overreaction to a “vent”. It’s not. While Nash’s phone call to the Commissioner was unwise rather than corrupt, the line demarking corruption should not be thin and difficult to see, it ought be as wide as a road.
This preserves the clear separation of the branches of government, but also avoids any ability for corruption to emerge. Corruption doesn’t appear suddenly, it creeps with tiny steps, often disguised as good intentions.
It’s easy to think that this is because we are a modern western democratic county and that our lack of corruption is somehow inherent in the system. But you only have to look across the ditch to Australia to see this is not so.
At numerous points, Australian police have had terrible corruption, not just blurring the lines between the police and the crooks, but at times the police have jumped the line and become crooks themselves.
In New South Wales, public inquiries and investigations uncovered swaths of offences as police officers became involved in violence, drug dealing, perverting the course of justice and even murder for hire.
This has also crept into politics. A few years back I had the privilege of having lunch with Tony Fitzgerald, who investigated allegations of corruption involving Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The Fitzgerald Inquiry revealed that systemic corruption was rife in Queensland among a raft of politicians and police officers, including the commissioner of police.
Stuart Nash has resigned as Police Minister over a comment he made to Police Commissioner Andrew Coster.
So bad was the situation, Fitzgerald feared for his and his family’s safety. They would have been forced to leave the state if the key figures were not brought to justice, which was no sure thing at the time. That in itself is chilling.
While numerous Australian examples make it clear that modern democracies are not immune to corruption, the far bigger point is just how difficult it is to remove once it’s present.
Corruption is a cancer and even aggressive treatment often only puts it into remission rather than removing the threat altogether.
This is why New Zealand must protect against it, and removing Nash – for relatively minor indiscretions – is a heartening sign that we are accepting this challenge. We should be rightly proud of our lack of corruption and fiercely defend that status.
While New Zealand does have an active organised criminal underbelly, it is – relatively speaking – contained. Arguably, our greatest asset in this regard is a lack of corruption.
Internationally, organised crime is enabled by insider threats and justice sector tip-offs and nefarious actors in and around the courts. Its use in business and government sectors – such as airports and ports – better allows the moving of illegal goods, and within law enforcement agencies and the judiciary it assists in avoiding arrest and justice.
In turn, this allows organised crime groups to amass greater wealth that then enables more corruption. A nefarious snowball in action.
We should be pleased by the response to Nash’s indiscretion, based on the fact that a hard line on smaller matters may stop larger ones from coming about, but one cannot help but wonder if the calculations were political rather than principled.
Were National’s attacks, and Hipkins’ swift response, about upholding the fundamentals of our system, or simply gamesmanship with an eye on the looming election?
I’d like to think the former, but I’d bet money on the latter. Either way, the result was the correct one.
Dr Jarrod Gilbert is the director of Independent Research Solutions and a sociologist at the University of Canterbury.
