Stuart Nash

As the Ombudsman investigates whether an email from Stuart Nash sharing Cabinet discussions with political donors was improperly withheld, observers are ...

(And if pressure still comes, to prosecute),” he said in a post on Twitter. there's no mechanism built into governments to punish errors under the Official Information Act, especially systemic errors.” “That would allow Nash to take off his hat as minister, where he learned all the information, where he found out what happened in the Cabinet … *

The Government's withdrawal of Parliamentary access cards for lobbyists yesterday is largely symbolic and, in practice, pointless.

That won’t be helped by a Roy Morgan poll showing that even with the boost that Hipkins leadership initially received, Labour is stuck at 33 per cent while National is similarly stuck at 32 per cent. That would have been particularly difficult for GJ Thompson and Mike Munro, who went straight back to lobbying after brief times as Chief of Staff to Jacinda Ardern. The former Chief of Staff to John Key, Wayne Eagleson, is also on the list. I want Parliament to take another look at that, learning the lessons from that process.” He was in favour of the Bill but concerned that it might limit the ability of an MP’s constituents to come to Parliament to make a case for or against something that might affect their employment. “I’m calling on the third-party lobbyists themselves to develop a voluntary code of conduct that would help to enhance transparency, for example, by including the names of the clients that they represent on the websites,” he said.

He was stripped of his ministerial portfolios and kicked out of Cabinet after recent scandals - the latest that he revealed information about Cabinet ...

As the Ombudsman investigates whether an email from Stuart Nash sharing Cabinet discussions with political donors was improperly withheld, observers are ...

“That would allow Nash to take off his hat as minister, where he learned all the information, where he found out what happened in the Cabinet … (And if pressure still comes, to prosecute),” he said there's no mechanism built into governments to punish errors under the Official Information Act, especially systemic errors.” Reader donations are critical to what we do. Andrew Ecclestone, an open government researcher and senior associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Government Studies, told Newsroom the case was further evidence of the need for major OIA reforms, such as taking responsibility for the act away from the Ombudsman in favour of an Information Commissioner with greater powers to investigate the conduct of ministers’ offices. However, the email was not released to McKenzie, with Nash’s office saying it “[held nothing] that is within the scope of your request as the act relates only to information provided to me as minister”.

On Monday, National uploaded a trailer for a video on the Stuart Nash scandal, which used extensive footage from Newshub's TV bulletins. Warner Brothers- ...

Warner Brothers-Discovery, the owners of Newshub, sent a “cease and desist” cautionary letter asking National to take the trailer down. “We haven’t had any taxpayer funding from New Zealand on Air, put it that way,” he said. “We certainly haven’t received any taxpayer funding from New Zealand on Air for it,” he said.

Those who deliberately withhold information – or pressure others to do so – should fear more than a mild telling-off from the ombudsman.

The ombudsman may still find the decision was correct, but there are at least strong indications the information related to Nash’s emails that he is aware of as a minister – the information he released about confidential cabinet discussions is something he is only aware of because he attended cabinet. That is, the person who had made the request had not actually requested that email under the OIA, because implicitly they had only requested information held by Hon. If agencies – or ministers – want to not release a particular bit of information, they can work to try to shoehorn it into one of the exceptions, even if it doesn’t really apply. But just about every time you will have heard a journalist assert the need to #FixTheOIA, they will have been talking about not the law itself, but the culture of gaming and non-compliance. Only those who deliberately and knowingly breach their OIA should face the risk of prosecution and conviction. Unlike freedom of information regimes in some other places, it applies to information, not documents, and it isn’t prescriptive about what types of documents can be requested.

The Prime Minister is gaslighting us on the Stuart Nash scandal.

Mates in big corporations, industry groups, government departments, the halls of parliament and the media skew the system to suit each other. This is the story of how networks of Mates have come to dominate business and government, robbing ordinary Australians. Mates in big corporations, industry groups, government departments, the halls of parliament and the media skew ... Rigged uncovers the pattern of political favours, grey gifts and information sharing that has been allowed to build up over two decades. Every hour you work, thirty minutes of it goes to line the Mates’ pockets rather than your own. And yet, the prime minister tells us there is nothing to see here. They do it over and over and over. “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. Ignore the evidence in front of you. Three times it was discussed with the former prime ministers' office. Yikung Zhang and co got money for everyone and ended up being charged by the Serious Fraud Office. (For whom he made a difference fill in the blanks at home).