Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): That was the sound of a Minister not taking responsibility for his own shortcomings when it comes to this whole sorry saga. That Minister today would not apologise to those four staff who were identified in this report as having been disadvantaged under his watch. That Minister refused to apologise to them. That Minister also refused to do the very investigation that has found these shortcomings when I asked him to on 16 March in Parliament.Hon Simon Bridges: You're wrong.SUE MORONEY: Mr Bridges I stood right here and I asked you to do that inquiry and you did not. You failed to do the inquiry that you should have done Mr Bridges into this sorry state of affairs. But it is not the first time you have been missing in action on this particular issue.When I broke the story in July 2016 last year about the fraud that had happened that Simon Bridges did not tell the public about that Simon Bridges did not even tell the Prime Minister about until—Hon Simon Bridges: There was a criminal investigation going on.SUE MORONEY: He did not even tell the Prime Minister. So he thought the Prime Minister was going to get in the way of an investigation? I do not think so. He failed to tell the Prime Minister until the day I went public with the story in July 2016. So we need to know why that was.But once I went public with that story my phone rang off the hook. It is very interesting in today's digital age that when a story gets out and names someone like Joanne Harrison for fraud—suddenly that went international. I got phone calls from both within New Zealand and outside New Zealand over a 2-week period that formed a very clear picture of the way this particular fraudster operated.There were two main things that she did all the time because this is not her first fraud. She has been convicted of a previous fraud but there are other stories still to come out. What I learnt was that there are two main things that Joanne Harrison did everywhere she went. The first one was to build a trusting relationship of varying degrees with the middle-aged male running the show. That was the first thing that she did everywhere she went. The second thing she did was she got rid of anyone who stood in her way. She got rid of people who were on to her. So knowing that this was her mode of operating those were the two things that I explored. It was not hard to work out and so the Minister could have worked that out. If he had actually been prepared to be transparent and upfront with the New Zealand public he could have got that information much earlier and known that these were the areas that needed to be explored.The first of those I am not going to explore in this debate because I am hoping that that will be the subject of another urgent debate later on perhaps this week or next week in the House. But the second one is really the subject of this debate and that is getting rid of anyone who was on to her. That was her mode of operating. I saw it happen overseas; I had reports of it happening within New Zealand in other workplaces as well. But really you did not have to get all those phone calls about Joanne Harrison to understand that that was an area to explore.Both of the chief executive officers (CEOs) involved—both Martin Matthews before he left the Ministry of Transport but after he finally came to the conclusion that it was a serious fraud that had happened under his nose and also Peter Mersi the incoming CEO—and Simon Bridges the Minister who oversaw all of this should have automatically understood that when you have got a fraudster operating in a workplace there will be people who will have been targeted because that is the way fraudsters operate.Yes Joanne Harrison was not sophisticated I can tell you that. When you use twink on invoices that is not a sophisticated way of operating a fraud so let us put that one to rest. She was not at all sophisticated. She was so unsophisticated that the staff were blowing the whistle on her right left and centre so let us put that one to rest. But she was manipulative because guess what that is what all fraudsters are by definition. That is what they all are by definition. Show me the straight-up fraudster and I will introduce you to the tooth fairy because there is really no such thing as a straight-up hard-down-the-line fraudster. They are manipulative. That is why these systems are so important. It is why these systems are so important because yes the Minister is right on one hand: frauds have happened before and they will happen in the future. The thing is that we need the systems in place to make sure that those frauds do not continue on for the 3 years that this was allowed to continue in the Ministry of Transport.So what are those systems? Well actually in this case pretty much all the systems worked. That is the good news. The public servants whom we trust with our money with the New Zealand public's money did what we needed them to do. They said: The invoicing practices are wrong." They said: "The contracting regimes that Joanne Harrison is deploying are shonky and dodgy." And they were reporting them. They were reporting them all the way up the line. Where it went wrong was that they were not being listened to; their advice was not being taken.Remember these are hard-working public servants of long standing in the finance department. I have met with some of these whistleblowers. They are some of the most genuine hard-working people you could ever expect to come across. They were not listened to in favour of a relative newcomer to the Ministry of Transport who was doing things like getting the chief executive to dress up like Marty McFly from Back to the Future. So she was being trusted but these hard-working—mainly women actually who were working in the finance department and in the legal teams their word was not being taken for it. So the systems were in fact working but when they were blowing the whistle the whistle was not being heard and it was not being heard by the referee in particular and that is what needed to happen.So these whistleblowers were doing the right thing. They are heroes. We should be celebrating what they did but instead what happened—and happened under Simon Bridges' watch—was that they lost their jobs and they lost their jobs prematurely. The thing that always stuck with me is that they got made redundant just before Christmas. Who makes workers redundant just before Christmas unless there is an absolute urgent need to do so? Well the Ministry of Transport did even though the system that was going to replace them did not come into being until July the next year. So that smelt for a start.It took far too long for this investigation to take place. I first raised the prospect of an investigation on 9 March when the Ministry of Transport came before the select committee. I asked it not once but twice during that select committee hearing to hold an investigation into the restructuring of the finance department in light of the fact that the fraud had happened and those staff had been blowing the whistle on Joanne Harrison. I was so gutted that the CEO—Peter Mersi the incoming one—said no to that request. The first time I said it well I thought: "Gosh poor guy he's been in the job 3 days and this has all blown up maybe he hasn't thought this through." So I gave him you know 5 or 10 minutes in the select committee room to dwell on it a bit and then I asked him again and he still said no. But then the very next week I came into the House and asked the Minister to hold exactly that investigation and the Minister also failed in his obligation towards those staff and did not order that investigation to happen. He was specifically asked by me to order that investigation and he did not.Eventually running out of patience I met with the State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes on 26 April and I put the information again in front of him. I said to him: "This is important because this is about the integrity of the Public Service. If public servants in Wellington think that there is a situation going on where people might have been made redundant because they told the truth at the workplace it's not good enough to leave it there. It is something that the States Services Commission needs to get involved in." I was really disappointed that the commissioner Peter Hughes actually said no. He said he was reluctant to do it and then he wrote to me on 5 May and said that he was satisfied with the actions that the Ministry of Transport had taken and he would not take further action by having this investigation.Then about 4 weeks later he changed his mind. Why did he change his mind? It was because of the involvement of the media. It was because the media would not let this lie and I want to say before I finish this contribution what a great part of our democracy that is. I want to particularly thank Radio New Zealand for its relentless pursuit of this issue because it was its advocacy and its pressure that brought about this representation this investigation these findings that I hope will make a real difference in our Public Service."