Wilson Margaret: Urgent Debates — Report by Secretary of Labour—Immigration Service 
Wilson Margaret: Urgent Debates — Report by Secretary of Labour—Immigration Service 
[Volume:611;Page:8333] 
Hon MARGARET WILSON (Minister of Labour) 
: 
 Mr McCully’s speech is a classic example of a member yet again trying to denigrate the integrity of a senior public servant who investigated a very serious allegation and produced a report and just because it does not support the conclusions Mr McCully wanted he is playing politics instead of looking at the facts in the report. Mr McCully is always trying to shoot the messenger by distorting the facts in an attempt to undermine the public’s confidence in its public servants. Once again the chief strategist for the National Party’s re-election team fails to understand the facts and fails to analyse what is in the report. 
The reason the public can have confidence in Dr Buwalda’s report is that he has produced a report that relies upon facts and not fictions. Mr McCully implied when this investigation was being announced and in his speech today that it was not worthwhile because Dr Buwalda was neither independent nor impartial. I can say that the chief executive of the Department of Labour is entirely the appropriate person to investigate matters of staff performance and departmental systems and processes. Mr McCully has yet again launched a personal attack on a public servant without justification. The report’s conclusions are clearly supported by the investigation process and as the State Services Commissioner himself says Dr Buwalda has “not only established the facts of the matter in question but also identified areas of improvement”. 
The question for the public is whether the conclusions in the report—namely that there was no conspiracy no deliberate cover-up and that there were serious deficiencies in the way in which the official information request was handled—are supported by the evidence in the report. This whole Zaoui issue came to the fore through the following serious allegations made in the media on 29 and 30 July this year. Those allegations were that a media adviser in the New Zealand Immigration Service claimed in an internal memo that officials agreed to “lie in unison” about the presence in the country of a suspected terrorist; and secondly that officials lied to the Ombudsman about the existence of this internal memo. The department’s new chief executive at that time—he had taken up the job only 5 days earlier—undertook to ensure that these allegations were to be thoroughly and openly investigated and to deal with any issues that arose from them. 
It is important for this House to understand exactly what process was followed. What the chief executive did was first identify importantly what questions were to be answered by his inquiry. The two most important ones for our purposes here are: was there a conspiracy to deceive among officials in relation to the Zaoui case? The second question was: was information managed by the department in relation to the Zaoui case in accordance with the Official Information Act; if not why not? Subsequent questions were also asked relating to those matters. Dr Buwalda then followed the established process in these matters—that is he asked the department’s internal auditor to establish the facts of the matter who was involved what happened and why. It was that internal auditor whose task it is to undertake reviews and inquiries of this nature who then went about the task of doing precisely that. Once those findings of the internal auditor were made they were presented to the chief executive who then on that basis formed conclusions about whether there were possible breaches of the Official Information Act or breaches of the  
Public Service Code of Conduct 
 or whether there was any evidence of the allegations about lying in unison. The chief executive Dr Buwalda having considered all the evidence made his conclusions which are in the report and also undertook to take what reviews and disciplinary investigations were required. 
I think it is important to concentrate on what was in the report not on what was speculated to be in the report as we heard from the previous member. The chief executive’s report fails to find evidence to suggest that departmental officials colluded or conspired to lie in unison or that officials deliberately misled the Ombudsman regarding the existence of the “lie in unison” memo. To have a conspiracy there must be more than one person involved. There was no evidence in the documents examined or gained during interviews that points to a conspiracy to deceive or any intention to deceive in relation to the annotations made in the media log on 17 December by Ian Smith. I agree that the media log was a very unlikely vehicle for recording or communicating details of a conspiracy as it was distributed to a relatively large number of people—over 300 we have heard; a very weird way to conduct a conspiracy. Rather I agree with the chief executive’s analysis and conclusions—namely: “On the face of it the annotation made by Mr Smith seems to display poor judgment a lack of professionalism and a lack of respect for the media. Mr Smith himself acknowledges the annotation was inappropriate.” That was the conclusion contained in the report and that is the conclusion I would argue that is borne out by the facts. 
Just as important if not more important for the integrity of the public service and confidence in it was the second question relating to the way in which the official information request was handled by the department. In this respect the report identifies several areas where the standards and behaviours demonstrated by the Department of Labour staff seem to fall short of the levels that could be reasonably expected of public servants. Of principal concern in this regard is that the department must consistently demonstrate high standards and behaviours in order to deserve and hold the public confidence needed for it to carry out its work effectively. 
 That is acknowledged by the chief executive; that is supported by the Minister myself who is responsible for the department. The department must therefore address standards and behaviour issues identified in this report as a matter of urgency. The chief executive is currently engaged in disciplinary action relating to possible breaches of acceptable conduct and behaviour. I will make no further comment on that because it is a matter between an employer and an employee and fair process must be followed in that regard. However I note that the chief executive has undertaken to reinforce the standards of conduct and behaviour expected from all staff in the Department of Labour. 
The chief executive has also identified deficiencies in the department’s record management practices and as a matter of urgency the department has initiated an internal review of its guidelines for responding to official information requests. The chief executive has made it clear that departmental managers are personally accountable for ensuring that guidelines are followed and for ensuring that staff understand their responsibilities under the Official Information Act. This particular case shows the far-reaching effects of the Official Information Act and is a useful reminder to all those who are bound by it. In this instance the Official Information Act covered off-the-cuff remarks in an in-house email media log. Treating such logs as official information is a very high standard for our public servants to maintain but this Government believes that high standards are necessary for a strong public service and commends the chief executive for the way he has gone about the conduct of this investigation and for the transparent and honest way in which he has identified on the facts those matters that do need attention while at the same time establishing quite clearly that there was no conspiracy to cover up or lie. 
Let me finish by reiterating for the benefit of Opposition members who seem to be fixated on conspiracy theories that there is no evidence that officials lied or conspired to deceive anyone. Nor did they deliberately shield themselves from scrutiny under the Official Information Act. Nevertheless the investigation found that the high standards expected of our public servants were not met in this instance and therefore action has to be taken. It is useful to be reminded that in real life as opposed to the fantasy world in which the Mr McCullys of the world live conspiracies are rare and explanations are more likely to lie in poor judgment and systemic failure which is exactly what happened in this case.