The Prime Minister has announced that his office is in the process of making public another lobbying document related to a transparency issue.
Christopher Luxon expressed his agreement with the Ombudsman’s report, which criticized his office for being “unreasonable” in withholding documents from an official information request.
Matt Burgess, who previously served as Luxon’s chief policy adviser, received documents from lobbyists representing Z Energy and dairy cooperative Fonterra. These documents advocated for legal changes to shield companies from being sued under tort law for climate emissions damages.
A further document, identified as the Z Energy addendum document, surfaced during the Ombudsman’s investigation and was also provided to Burgess.
This document has not yet been released to the public, and a decision under the Official Information Act (OIA) has not been made regarding its availability to the requester.
RNZ has made a request to obtain this document, and Luxon assured RNZ that his office is working on making it public.
“As I understand it, there’s commercially sensitive information in that, but we will work our way through that as quickly as we can,” Luxon stated.
Regarding the Ombudsman’s decision, Luxon described it as a “very fair report.”
“I fully embrace it, and I fully embrace all the recommendations as well. As I said at the time, it didn’t meet our high expectations and standards, that’s why we’ve made sure that every staffer is fully aware of their obligations.”
Luxon expressed his disagreement with Burgess’ claims that it was not standard for staff to document the content of meetings, and also with the assertion that personal email accounts were commonly used due to inadequate parliamentary IT systems.
“He no longer works for us and hasn’t for some time, but the issue for me is making sure that all staffers understand their obligations,” Luxon said.
“I’ve not seen widespread evidence of people using their personal email accounts. My staff are well aware of their obligations, and again, that has been reinforced.
“The responsibility and the obligation is that they need to record those meetings and maintain transparency and trust.”
‘No justification’ for personal email use – Labour
Labour leader Chris Hipkins voiced strong criticism of the situation, describing it as highly problematic.
“They seem to have gone to great lengths to prevent that information from reaching the public domain, even though people have been repeatedly asking for it. That’s simply not good enough,” Hipkins stated.
He mentioned that the Ombudsman’s findings confirmed their suspicions that there was an intentional effort by the prime minister’s office to withhold information that they were legally required to release.
Hipkins noted that during his tenure as Prime Minister, note-takers were often present in meetings, but whether notes were taken depended on the meeting.
“But if you’re given written documents, there is an expectation that you’ll have a system for recording that and for releasing that information when it’s asked,” he added.
He emphasized that there is “no justification for the use of personal email.”
“Historically, there were real issues with the IT system in terms of people traveling overseas not being able to access their information and so on.
“The parliamentary IT systems here have been upgraded substantially since then, you can now access your email and your files pretty much anywhere in the world at any time using just about any device,” Hipkins explained.
Second case of personal email use
The Green Party, through an OIA, discovered lobbying material from Beef+Lamb NZ regarding Resource Management Act reform was sent in February to a private email of a staff member in the office of ACT MP and parliamentary undersecretary Simon Court.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick noted that this was the only other instance involving a member of the government executive, but suggested more cases could exist.
“Yeah, so far,” she said. “I think a one-off you could say is a problem, but when we have two very clear examples now of private emails being used to communicate with lobbyists that we’re starting to see a bit of a pattern.”
“All parliamentarians, the Prime Minister, Ministers, have a vested interest in ensuring that New Zealanders trust our democracy and the institutions like Parliament, which means improving these rules and improving, or rather minimizing, the access that lobbyists currently get,” Swarbrick stated.
ACT leader David Seymour commented that he was unaware of the Simon Court incident, and while he agreed personal email accounts should not be used for official work, he believed there was little harm done.
“I occasionally have people come to me and say ‘Oh, if you use a personal email, the OIA doesn’t apply’ – that’s rubbish, that’s not true … it doesn’t actually make a legal difference,” Seymour said.
He added that while someone might have faced issues with the parliamentary IT system, the incident was eventually uncovered through the Official Information Act, indicating the system was functioning effectively.
“It may well be that they didn’t solicit it, that somebody who had that email address used it.”
“This is a bit crazy, there’s some bigger problems in New Zealand. He’s complied with the law, he’s released it under the OIA, frankly I think there might be one or two bigger issues in New Zealand today,” Seymour remarked.
He confirmed that personal email accounts should not be utilized and believed the understanding was already widespread among staff.
