The "inexcusable" email that led to Stuart Nash's sacking from Cabinet formed part of correspondence requested by - and improperly denied to - Newsroom in 2021. Pete Mckenzie reports.
Labour MP Stuart Nash appears to have improperly withheld the June 2020 email that forced prime minister Chris Hipkins to sack him as a minister for “inexcusable” behaviour, lending support to accusations by National Party leader Christopher Luxon of a “cover-up” and highlighting systemic issues with the Official Information Act.
In June 2020, Nash emailed Troy Bowker and Greg Loveridge, two friends with significant rental holdings who had donated large sums of money to his political campaigns. In the email, Nash informed them that during a Cabinet discussion about the number of employees a company would need to qualify for rent relief, he had “lost this argument” to attorney-general David Parker, then-Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and then-minister for regional economic development Shane Jones.
In his email, Nash added, “I am as annoyed (and surprised) about the final outcome of the ‘commercial rent relief package’ as you are”. The email was an “inexcusable” breach of Cabinet rules, Hipkins said on Tuesday. Those rules require ministers to keep Cabinet discussions confidential and publicly support the final decision made.
READ MORE: * Nash received $51k from Troy Bowker * Donations raise conflict issue in forestry * Perception problems hang over PM after inevitable Nash sacking * Nash's poor judgment only half the story
On June 8, 2021, Newsroom made a request to Nash’s office under the Official Information Act for “All written correspondence and details of the nature and substance of any other communication since the start of 2020” between Nash and 19 of his political donors. Included on the list of donors was Troy Bowker. Given that the June 2020 email to Bowker concerned discussions Nash was having in his capacity as a minister, it appears that the June 2020 email fell within the scope of Newsroom’s request.
In August 2021, however, Nash’s office responded, “I hold nothing that is within the scope of your request as the Act relates only to information provided to me as minister. I must therefore refuse your request under section 18(e) of the Official Information Act as the information does not exist or cannot be found.”
Failing to disclose documents within the scope of a valid request without justification is a breach of the Official Information Act. Nash has been approached for comment.
Both Nash’s office and the office of then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern were aware of the existence of the June 2020 email at the time Nash’s office responded to Newsroom’s OIA request. On Tuesday afternoon, Hipkins told reporters that Nash’s office had notified staff in Ardern's office that the June 2020 email existed and that they were excluding it from their response to a 2021 OIA request. Whether that was Newsroom’s request is not clear, but the timing indicates that it was.
On Thursday afternoon, the Prime Minister’s Office released a statement attributing the withholding of information to staff oversight.
“Two staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office, deputy Chief of Staff Holly Donald and a senior advisor were aware of the original OIA. Only the senior advisor was aware of a subsequent complaint to the Ombudsman.
“It was not escalated to the former Prime Minister or the former Chief of Staff at any point.”
Both staff had reportedly apologised for their error of judgment in “not recognising the significance of the email and escalating it at the time”.
Hipkins said the error was not acceptable.
“Stuart Nash’s email should have been raised with the Prime Minister at the time. I have made it very clear with staff that I expect matters like this to be escalated to me.”
While he accepted the staff members’ apologies, he said the onus was on Stuart Nash to review his correspondence and identify the email himself.
Earlier this week, Opposition leader Christopher Luxon accused the Government of covering up the existence of the June 2020 email. “Clearly people inside the Prime Minister’s office were aware of the issue, and so what kind of culture is that if you don’t actually flag those issues higher up the chain?”
Hipkins rejected such accusations and noted that while some of Ardern's staff were informed of the existence of the email, she and her chief of staff were not. “I don’t think it was tried to be covered up, my understanding is that it just wasn’t within the scope of the request,” he said on Tuesday.
Nash’s apparent breach of the OIA, however, calls that assessment into question. It is also likely to increase the pressure Nash faces from Luxon to immediately resign as an MP, which would trigger a costly by-election in his electorate of Napier. Nash has said he will not resign.
The apparent breach also highlights the weaknesses of New Zealand’s information disclosure regime, in which senior bureaucrats and political staffers exercise enormous control over which documents are disclosed. In some cases, that has led to requests being refused for some journalists and granted for others, or requests being denied without any legal basis.
In 2019, Hipkins, at that time the minister for state services, said there was a “culture of game playing” within the civil service when it came to the OIA, that the legislation needed “more teeth”, and that he supported a review of the legislation. In 2020, then-Justice Minister Andrew Little said the legislation would be reviewed. The next year, his replacement as justice minister, Kris Faafoi, indefinitely delayed that review.
The debacle over the June 2020 email is not the first time Nash has faced scrutiny for his conduct. In June 2020, Newsroom reported that Nash had received at least $50,000 in donations for the 2020 election, with at least $25,500 of that coming from people with connections to the forestry industry for which Nash had ministerial responsibility.
More recently, Nash has faced scrutiny for lobbying Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to appeal a judicial decision he disagreed with, for publicly criticising another judicial decision relating to the murder of constable Matthew Hunt, and for improperly pressuring a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment official on behalf of a constituent.
On Wednesday, Hipkins launched a review of all Nash’s communications over the past two years to “look at whether there have been any other breaches of Cabinet collective responsibility or confidentiality, or whether there have been any perceived or actual conflicts of interest in communications between Stuart Nash and those donors”.
“I've asked Stuart repeatedly over the last few weeks, whether there are other things that I should have been aware of, he indicated that there weren’t,” said Hipkins on Tuesday. “Clearly, that was incorrect.”
