Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has spoken more about the Stuart Nash email scandal, saying Nash has been “ultimately held accountable”.
At a media conference at the Manurewa RSA today, Hipkins said he thought staff “made a mistake”.
Nash has been accused of trying to cover up the email which ended his career, after it was revealed two staff knew of the email, but did not release it in response to an OIA request.
Nash - who provided the email to the staff after he was made aware of the OIA - says this is because the OIA related to correspondence he made as a minister, and the email was sent in his capacity as an MP.
Of the mistake, Hipkins said: “I have to accept them at their word, I wasn’t there at the time that this happened.
“Both of the people concerned are people who I regard to be incredibly diligent and honest with high levels of integrity so I think it’s really horrible that their integrity is being impeached in the way that it is at the moment.
“Ultimately the responsibility for signing out official information act requests sits with the minister concerned. They have to be responsible and accountable for what goes out in their name. In this case that was Stuart Nash and he ultimately has been held accountable.”
He says it was some time ago the prime minister’s office became aware of the email, and “it would have been nice if they’d remembered it two weeks ago but in reality they deal with thousands and thousands of pages of information regularly - I don’t expect them to memorise every one of them.
“In this case I think they made a mistake several years ago, I don’t necessarily expect that they would have remembered it but I do expect that Stuart Nash would have remembered it.”
“He should have known that that was there, he should have told me about it.”
He says he thinks the work around official information act requests has been “sound and positive”.
“We’re proactively releasing a much greater amount of information, we’re getting much more timely OIA responses across the public sector. That’s not to say there aren’t still areas that we can do better but if you look at the timeliness of them ... the performance of the public sector has improved.”
PM Chris Hipkins at a media conference at the Manurewa RSA today. Photo / Alex Burton
He said OIA responses are also being published publicly so everyone can see the information rather than just the person who requested it, and all these changes are making a difference.
But the act was created “in a world before email and in a world before social media” and in due course he expects there will be time to look at it again.
“In the choice between cock-up and the conspiracy, this one was absolutely in the cock-up end. Someone made a mistake, I don’t think there was any ill intent there. The people concerned, I know them well ... they made a mistake but every human being makes a mistake from time to time.”
‘It is the right thing to do’
Hipkins visited the Manurewa RSA today to meet veterans who are among hundreds of thousands to receive higher payments from tomorrow.
Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni have been attending an event hosted by former All Black captain Sir Buck Shelford.
Last month, Hipkins announced about $1 billion worth of government programmes were being axed and instead benefits would increase from 1 April in line with inflation rather than average wages.
The decision means more than a quarter of New Zealanders will see a boost to their incomes, including 880,000 pensioners and veterans and 52,000 students. About 223,000 workers will receive an increase to the minimum wage.
There will also be higher payments for Working for Families and Best Start recipients and a new Childcare Subsidy will kick in.
Hipkins says with superannuation, the veterans pension and the minimum wage increasing tomorrow, it’s going to make a big difference in the cost of living for those on the lowest incomes.
He says the minimum wage increase of 7.2 per cent is in line with the inflation at the time the decision was made.
“Minimum wage changes were well foreshadowed... I acknowledge for the small business community in particular the minimum wage can put an extra cost on them, an extra pressure on them, but in my conversations with small business owners they also want to make sure that they’re doing the right thing by their staff as well.
“Business always face that difficult juggling act ... but it is the right thing to do.”
He says there is a lot of work going on internationally to try to bring inflation rates down, and New Zealand’s rate is “actually much lower than many of the other countries we compare ourselves to, including our friends across the Tasman”.
He says the living wage and minimum wage are two different debates.
“Ultimately we want people to be able to work hard and get ahead. As the government employer we’ve been focused on getting the living wage implemented across the public sector - that’s up to each individual employer to do and and as a government we’ve been trying to lead by example.”
Hipkins welcomes National’s electricity policy
In response to National’s electricity policy announced earlier today, Hipkins says: “I’ve only seen some of the headlines around it but it’s about time the National Party discovered that electricity and renewable energy actually exists because up until now they seem to have mounted all their arguments in favour of continuing the use of fossil fuels.
“That’s a welcome development. New Zealand’s got one of the highest uptake rates for electric vehicles in the developed world and that’s because of the policies that we’ve put in place that have been opposed by the opposition, so I think if they are starting to realise that renewable energy is the way of the future, that’s a welcome development.”
He says the proposal to cut red tape and making it easier to get renewable energy consents is a big part of the RMA reforms the government is already working on, which the National Party is opposing.
“If you look at the carbon budgets that we’ve released, decarbonising transport, decarbonising heavy industry are integral to achieving the targets that we’ve put out there. Ultimately I think the plans from National today seem to be fairly late to the party and seem fairly light on detail.
“We’ve actually been getting on with the job of actually doing it, there’s more work to be coming very soon around industrial decarbonisation, we’ve already got significant work rolling out across the public service.
“Transport is one of the most complex areas to get into, reducing transport emissions is challenging given that the vehicle fleet that we’ve got on the road right now is likely to stay on the road for some time. People don’t tend to replace their cars every year.”
