Prebble regrets not saying Corngate information withheld

4.00pm

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet chief executive Mark Prebble told MPs today he had erred in failing to make it known he had withheld Corngate documents after the prime minister had ordered their release.

Dr Prebble did not release four documents when Prime Minister Helen Clark ordered all official papers to be released during last year's election campaign.

Helen Clark was angry when she learned months after the July 2002 release that Dr Prebble had not followed her instructions.

Dr Prebble today told MPs on the government administration select committee he had asked for a memo to go with the release, making it clear some documents had been withheld.

"That ought to have been made clear," he said.

"I had understood when I said don't release it that there was a memo going to go in there explaining what wasn't there, as is normal practice under an Official Information Act.

"If an issue comes up at some future occasion where I think 'look, in spite of what someone has said in public there is a reason I won't do it', I agree absolutely it ought to have been apparent that we hadn't done it."

His department did not manage the release, which had been done at a frantic pace, he said.

Since then it has become known that more than 100 other documents were not released.

The Government said they were drafted after the Corngate story broke, were duplicates of ones that were released, or were overlooked when the first batch was gathered.

The Corngate affair is the alleged release of genetically engineered (GE) contaminated corn in 2000 and subsequent Government cover-up outlined in Nicky Hager's book Seeds of Distrust, published during the election campaign in July last year.

Helen Clark denied any cover-up or contamination when the book was released last July 10 -- just 17 days before the election -- and pledged to release all Government advice on the matter.

The release of hundreds of pages of documents started that day and Dr Prebble, as chief executive, was responsible for releasing all material from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC).

He withheld a December 8, 2000, memo from DPMC policy adviser Ruth Wilkie to Miss Clark which said: "We cannot say we have reliably discovered contamination in the corn currently planted but equally we cannot say that we have completely discounted it".

When the memo was not among the papers released before last year's election, Ms Wilkie wrote to Dr Prebble outlining her "concern" documents had been withheld.

"I consider that at least one of the notes filled an important gap in the paper trail."

- NZPA