Mike Hosking: Government's plain incompetence laid bare in Derek Handley fiasco

COMMENT: The last thing you need when you're in New York looking to promote your country is pesky little domestic details coming back to bite you in the bum.

Derek Handley has, of course, decided to tell all about his experience in dealing with this Government. And this Government has made perhaps one of the greatest cock ups of modern recruitment in dealing with him.

And it would appear far from over.

Last time we checked, Chris Hipkins was due in Parliament, under instruction of Speaker Trevor Mallard, to deliver all correspondence between Handley and former minister Clare Curran via her private e-mail.

He failed to do so as he was on paternity leave. So Grant Robertson turned up with an overview of matters, but also failed to deliver.

This left the irrefutable sense of some sort of cover up, of something amiss.

Too much is missing, too many questions are left unanswered. Why, why is something so simple being made so hard?

Enter the Prime Minister on my radio show two weeks ago. She was very clearly asked about Handley, whether she knew Handley, whether she had corresponded with Handley.

She knew him, sort of, they weren't friends. She might have received a single text, she didn't reply. On the surface, she removed herself from proceedings. Except she didn't, because yet again the whole story is not told.

There were, in fact, two texts and an email.

The email was a singular revelation in itself, the second text has been revealed as part of Handley dump of the info he has. It involved her replying and telling him she'd talk to the team to see what they could do.

She says that wasn't about the new chief technology officer job. That denial, she hopes, keeps her out of looking like she has misled Parliament.

But nevertheless, she is on drip feed. Having had the chance to clear the decks numerous times now, she has failed to do so.

And thus ends up in New York on her first major overseas flag-waving exercise distracted by matters that should have been left at home.

We still don't know whether there is. The irony could not be more stark, that it's more Handley dumping the info, not the Government as promised.

And that's before you get to Handley's main complaints. No one had reached out and told him what's gone wrong. That seems inconceivable, if not plain rude.

And Handley's other major issue - and he's quite right having seen what he's gone through - what entrepreneur in his right mind would have a bar of this lot?

They are whiteboards, pocket protectors, and Wellington wonks personified. They are a waste of space for a young, thrusting entrepreneur looking to effect change.

And here's the thing, I'm not sure there is actually a scandal here, just sheer, plain incompetence. And yet they're taking that, and bungling it further by not being open and honest.

How hard can it be?