Kerre Woodham: The Stuart Nash affair highlights exactly what has gone wrong for the past five years

Before we get on to the Stuart Nash affair itself, cast your mind back to December of last year, the Chief Ombudsman, Peter Boshier, launched an investigation after multiple claims that agencies were taking too long to respond to the Official Information Act, and the requests around the OIA.

The announcement of the investigation came just two months after Boshier found that spin doctors, paid for by you and me, at Government departments appeared to be flouting the law when failing to answer questions from journalists. 

Boshier was worried that delays are leading to the perception, especially among journalists, that the OIA is being used as a bureaucratic tool to stifle the flow of information.

Both journalists and politicians from other parties complained to Boshier they were waiting months for the Government agencies to finally get around to releasing information. Boshier said the OIA exists to promote transparency and accountability and to enable the public to participate in government decision making and requires agencies to make decisions on requests for information as soon as possible.

He hoped his investigation would be completed by the end of 2024, and in his statement, he says I want to lift the rock to see what is underneath.  

Well, now with the Stuart Nash affair, we can see exactly what's under the rock, as Boshier put it.

An army of bureaucrats scuttling around, covering up information, delaying information, trying to pretend that information isn't important when in fact it is. And who will be sacrificed if the scanty garments of plausible deniability are stripped away from Ministers and Prime Ministers?

Oh, it's not the minister's fault. Not the Prime Minister's fault that this was not released. Oh, no, no, no, no, not their fault. It's the bureaucrats and the comms officials who have made the mistakes and they will be named and shamed, and that's where they’ll hide in the first place.  

The Official Information Act is legislation. It's law. And when Newsroom made a request to Stuart Nash's office for any correspondence between him and major donors to his electorate campaign, it is obvious that that e-mail should have been part of the parcel of information.

It is obvious to his staffers. It should have been obvious to the Prime Minister's staffers. It is ludicrous to say they didn't know. 

So, when I look at the breakdown of the relationship I had with this Government, I'm going to say, you know what? It's not me, it's you, Government.

Because this is what it's been like all the way through. This absolute gaslighting. Trying to make us think that it's our fault, not theirs.

The Stuart Nash affair just highlights exactly what has gone wrong for the past five years. 

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