Radio NZ bosses recalled to select committee over Hirschfeld meeting

Carol Hirschfeld's former RNZ bosses will front a select committee again over their statements on her meeting with Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran. Photo / File

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson and board chairman Richard Griffin will be recalled to Parliament next week over their statements to a select committee about former executive Carol Hirschfeld's meeting with Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran.

Thompson and Griffin will reappear before the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee on Thursday after inadvertently misleading it on March 1 over the meeting during their recent annual review.

Hirschfeld had said her December meeting with Curran at a Wellington café was unplanned but admitted to her bosses on Sunday, four months later, that it was organised beforehand.

Hirschfeld was not authorised to meet the minister.

The admission led to her immediate resignation.

Thompson and Griffin both inadvertently misled MPs on the committee by saying it was a coincidence that Hirschfeld and Curran had bumped into each other in the Astoria café.

Curran said those comments to the select committee prompted her office to immediately contact the broadcaster on March 1, and again on March 22, to set the record straight that the meeting was pre-planned.

Hirschfeld continued to describe the meeting with Curran as unplanned even after the select committee meeting.

Griffin says a personal source contacted him late last week to tell him that the meeting was not coincidental and was in fact scheduled in the minister's diary.