Adams Paul: Urgent Debates — Report by Secretary of Labour—Immigration Service 
Adams Paul: Urgent Debates — Report by Secretary of Labour—Immigration Service 
[Volume:611;Page:8340] 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 It is interesting that wherever there are people we will always face challenges. In Government as in the private sector we are basically dealing with people and that requires great wisdom at times and also when one is dealing with people one has a leader. We are dealing with a chief executive who has given us a report. May I add that he is a new chief executive dealing with this particular party. I would like to comment briefly on James Buwalda’s report on the investigation into the Department of Labour’s management of the information in relation to Mr Ahmed Zaoui. 
In respect of allegations in a report like this United Future would be very concerned to ensure that the public service is run properly and with due respect for the law. That is what the public of New Zealand would also expect. But unfortunately when one begins to deal with issues like this especially in a political arena one can get people raising political points building a lot of emotion building a lot of flak and not dealing with the issues at hand; because again where there are people one will have challenges. That is what we are dealing with. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Like you guys! 
PAUL ADAMS 
: Not like us guys—we are here to help. In this case we are dealing particularly with the Official Information Act. Now for a democracy to function properly the public service must be fully accountable to the law to the Government of the day and to the public. The accusations that brought about this report particularly the comment that officials had “lied in unison” give me great cause for concern on the face of it. However in the overall conclusions of the chief executive’s report he states: “I believe my investigation has found no evidence that Department of Labour officials involved in handling official information relating to the Zaoui case lied. My overall conclusion in relation to the original allegations is as follows: Officials agreeing to ‘lie in unison’ ” he says: “I found no evidence to suggest” and continued on under the heading “Officials lied to the Ombudsman about the existence of the ‘lie in unison’ memorandum”: “I found no evidence that officials deliberately misled the Ombudsman.” 
I think the most telling evidence that there was no conspiracy is the reference to the conspiracy that was recorded on the department’s media log which is distributed by email to up to 300 people. Well I do not think one needs to be a rocket scientist to work out that if one wants to break a conspiracy at top level one would not send the information out by email to 300 people and bring them into the loop. Because I have found that if 12 people are in a loop and one person tells the next person by the time it gets around the loop to No. 12 the story is not the same. So if 300 people are put into the loop I do not believe that that is deliberately trying to set up a conspiracy. 
That is not to say that nobody has a case to answer. There were several apparent cases of unprofessionalism and general misconduct by staff members and those are being dealt with through normal disciplinary procedures as they should be. Whenever there are staff there will be those who do not follow the procedure and they do need to be dealt with. But I have found that dealing with issues is becoming increasingly complex today not necessarily because of the difficulty of the situation one is faced with but because of the incredible complexity we have put into laws in this nation about following the correct procedure and it sometimes can be very difficult to get the correct result; ask any small-business man in this country and I am sure he will agree with me. 
There is also an apparent lack of staff knowledge as to the correct guidelines for responding to Official Information Act requests. The department has said that this situation will be remedied and United Future will be monitoring the process to ensure that that happens. I personally believe that the chief executive has done a good job and looking into a new department I believe he has taken leadership and responsibility. He has checked things out correctly and I wish him well. United Future will be watching this situation closely but to be honest I think that the chief executive has it well in hand and may his leadership continue.