Kiri Allan arrest and resignation: RNZ board member lashes out over former Justice Minister’s scandal

A member of the RNZ board has hit out at the reaction to Justice Minister Kiri Allan’s resignation, and questioned why she was cleared to return to work.

Former journalist Jason Ake, who began his two-year term on the board at the start of this month, posted to Facebook that he didn’t “know why she [Allan] was cleared to return to mahi last week. All the signs were there”.

Ake’s post said there will be some who would be happy to think they had contributed to Allan’s downfall.

“There will be a cohort throwing their hands in feigned disbelief while quietly smirking that they contributed in some way to the palaver.

“When there’s blood in the water the sharks circle and they’re more than happy to digest every last morsel and watch the bones sink to the depths. It is a blood sport,” Ake wrote.

Allan was arrested overnight on Sunday and charged by police with careless use of a motor vehicle and failure to accompany a police officer.

Ake was approached for comment, but stopped answering his messages. RNZ did not respond to requests for comment and Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he had not seen the post.

Appointees to Government boards are under the microscope this year after Rob Campbell was sacked from the Te Whatu Ora board and the Environmental Protection Authority board for taking aim at the National Party over its opposition to co-governance.

Campbell was followed by a slew of allegations against other Government board members, including former Labour ministers Steve Maharey and Ruth Dyson. Maharey was found to have breached impartiality rules too, but kept his job as chairman of ACC, Pharmac and Education NZ.

Ake’s post cited the precedent of Todd Muller as someone who could take time off for mental health reasons and return to work.

“When Muller left the Nat leadership citing mental health, he called it early and bailed. He has since worked his way back into the fold but it takes time,” he said.

On July 1, the day Ake began his term on the RNZ board and the week stories about Allan’s conduct as a minister broke, Ake wrote a lengthy post about the conditions of ministerial office.

“I have worked in a ministerial parliamentary office and have an informed perspective at how intense the atmosphere can be. That’s because there’s just so much at stake,” he wrote.

“As staffers, you find out pretty quickly which MPs from across the entire ecosystem can be difficult to work with. Staff talk irrespective of which party they’re servicing.

“I was yelled at but I was one of the few who yelled back - maybe not in front of staff but afterwards most certainly,” he wrote.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor of the New Zealand Herald, which he joined in 2021. He previously worked for Stuff and Newsroom in their Press Gallery offices in Wellington. He started in the Press Gallery in 2018.