Brownlee Gerry: Urgent Debates — Release of Report—Telecommunications Stocktake Review 
Brownlee Gerry: Urgent Debates — Release of Report—Telecommunications Stocktake Review 
[Volume:631;Page:3129] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. If members have ever wondered where Jim Beryl John Hugh the boss Wally and the lovely Raewyn went—the characters from  
Gliding On 
—they are all alive and well on the eighth floor of the Beehive in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. This is an outfit that this report shows is extremely cobwebbed and burdened down by the dust of bureaucracy in a way that shows absolutely no respect for very big decisions being made by the Government and the consequences they can have on New Zealanders. It is the inefficiency of that outfit that has led to some $2 billion being written off the value of New Zealand’s largest public company. If people want to know what $2 billion can buy in Government well firstly it is 200 years’ worth of Saturday night’s Lotto prize. Secondly it is 20 percent of the annual increase in the health budget a 30 percent annual increase in an education budget more than 100 percent of what we could spend on defence and it would give students in New Zealand up to 5 years of totally free tertiary education. So no one should diminish the consequences of this leak. The only questions that remain to be answered now are what was the motivation behind Michael Ryan’s decision to steal and then pass on the document and who was the hapless official in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet who carelessly tossed the document into the “for shredding” basket for all who passed by to see and read. 
We need to know the answers to those questions because the Government spin out there is that this action was somehow a mistake and that Mr Ryan was just a lowly person working in the office who was not in any particularly important job but was only a messenger who happened upon a document sort of by mistake and thought that it might be of some interest to his friend. The question is how does a messenger inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet get to see a document like that? Copies of the document were delivered to all Ministers in envelopes which were sealed and marked “commercially sensitive” and numbered so that everyone knew who had them. But somehow one was carelessly tossed into a basket so that a messenger could come along have a bit of a look and think that his friend Mr Garty might be interested in reading it. 
I think that it is interesting to look at the sequence of events the investigator managed to uncover. He first said that on Monday 26 December Mr Ryan saw an agenda for either a Cabinet meeting that day or for a policy committee meeting to be held the following Wednesday. I want to know why the investigator does not know which agenda that man saw. I ask why Mr Wevers and all the other clever people in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet cannot tell the investigator which document the messenger saw—and how Mr Ryan was able to go out of the building meet with his friend Mr Garty that evening and indicate there was a possibility that Mr Garty might receive some secret Government document for his own use and mention to Mr Garty during the course of that conversation that Cabinet was to discuss a telecommunications stocktake at some point in the next couple of days. 
That is a very serious matter. It is no good for the Prime Minister just to say that that person has acted dishonestly. We all know that. He did sign those documents of confidentiality and he did agree to the various other requirements of someone who works in that position but the real question is why is it that if a Minister receives something in a sealed envelope and has to treat it with a great deal of sensitivity a messenger can just see it lying in a basket somewhere and decide to take it away? When Mr Ryan saw the telecommunications stocktake document he simply picked it up took it down to the messengers’ room stuffed it in his bag and took it out of the building. Well I would have thought that the Prime Minister’s department might have had better security than that. I would have thought that it would be almost impossible for someone to leave that building with a confidential document hidden in his or her bag so I want to know why there is some failure in the system. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I do it every day. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Mr Mallard says that he does it every day. Well I say to Mr Mallard that we know he is a messenger for the Government and therefore expendable but he is a Minister and we would expect a Minister to be able to do that. We do not expect messengers to be able to secretly take a document with enormous commercial sensitivity attached to it and quietly cart it home have a discussion with their mates about the possibility of getting a bit of free carpet and then hand over a document to their mates and say: “This is for your eyes only. Please do not photocopy it. Please do not spread it about.”—which raises the question as to why Mr Ryan gave the document to his friend in the first place. 
The issues around the way in which the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet operates are I think quite considerable. When I said before that there is a sort of  
Gliding On 
 attitude up there that attitude is all the way through this report. When we go further into the report we find that the investigator was interested to discuss a policy inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet about the handling of classified documentation. It states: “ ‘Policy and privacy’ information for which compromise does not threaten the security of the nation but rather the security or interests of individuals groups commercial entities government business and the community.” This was such a document. The question then is how was it to be handled? We find a little bit of an indication in the report to civil servants—which is why we want to know who the brains trust was who just tossed that document into the basket so that everybody could see it. We work to the “ ‘Need to retain” principle. Only retain classified documents especially circulated drafts while they are in use. Once a classified document or draft is no longer needed either return it to the originator or destroy it. ‘Need to retain’ principle should include: Keeping all holdings of loose classified material to a minimum; Annual reviews of holdings of loose classified material; How to return or dispose of unneeded classified material.” So the department has processes; it just does not follow them. 
 The messenger up there has certainly been dishonest but he is getting an overdue kicking when others up there have behaved in an equally sloppy manner. The department has a clear desk clear screen clear whiteboard policy. When a workstation is unattended the desk must be clear of any classified information and the computer must be accessible only through password entry. At the end of the business day all classified hard copies should be stored in locked storage. What we have now is a clear desk clear screen clear whiteboard but full shredding tray policy inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 
What is amazing is that it was Dr Prebble’s agent who undertook this particular inquiry. I will divert for a minute and acquaint everyone with who Dr Prebble is. He is the man who was head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time the Prime Minister got herself in the cart over “corngate”. Members may recall the various obfuscations that went on at that time and the months and months it took before we were able to find out the truth that related to that particular issue. Is it now surprising that we have the same Dr Prebble out there saying that we have got the little scrote who did it and it will not happen again? I do not think so. I cannot help thinking that there is something bigger afoot here. 
Members should imagine this messenger inside the department having the time to wander round and have a casual read of the agenda for Cabinet the following day and of the policy committee meeting the following night. He might have spotted a bit on Telecom so decided to keep an eye on that for a day or two then thought he could duck out of the office go to the cycle club meeting that night and ask his mate Pete what he thinks of this Telecom stocktake and what it might be about and if he is interested he will shoot back tomorrow and flog it and hand it over to him. It was quite easy and simple and no checks whatsoever were involved. 
Those claims by Mr Prebble and Mr Wevers and others that they are completely innocent and that it was nothing to do with them and their view that if someone is trying to be dishonest what can one do do not give us an acceptable answer. Where is the reasonable programme to tighten up security inside that department? 
Underlying all this of course is that Labour members just do not care about the business community. It does not bother them. Dr Cullen is laughing as he always laughs at the business community. It just does not bother them. Thousands of mum and dad investors in Telecom had their equity written off to a huge extent because of this leak. Dr Cullen said it would have happened anyway—as if that is some sort of an excuse. The reality is that if Dr Cullen had released this in his Budget he would not have had the other threatening material in there. I doubt very much that he would have stood up in this House and said that the Government was about to split New Zealand’s largest public company in two. I do not think he would have done that. When he tells us tomorrow that the energy companies will have the axe taken to them that is fair enough. If that is what Dr Cullen wants to tell the House tomorrow I think he now has an obligation to tell the House today. 
The reality is that Parliament has a right to expect that an executive will conduct his or her business in a professional and caring manner. But there is no care for those investors out there who put small amounts of money on a weekly basis into managed funds and various other superannuation vehicles. The Government’s answer is that those people should not worry about that but leave it all to the Government which will do it for them. Can members guess what one of the biggest sellers of Telecom shares has been in recent days? It is the Government’s superannuation fund. Members should tell me that there is not a bit of Chinese whispering going on between the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet the Minister of Finance’s office and the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation. If they are wrong Dr Cullen should stand up and say so. The evidence is very clear when we look at the trading that goes on in the stock market. 
So the question comes back to the guy who has so far not been named and has so far apparently been exonerated. Members should think about this man who receives a highly sensitive document in an envelope that has a number on it. He initials it opens the seal gets out the document does his high-powered analysis of it and then says: “OK fair enough I’ll get rid of that. I’ll biff it over here.” There are passers-by coming through as in a bus station having a quick flick through and seeing whether any of their mates want to see it. But the man is exonerated. The State Services Commission has stated: “I wish to make it clear that this recommendation should not be seen as in any way a criticism of the actions of the relevant Advisor…”. Who is the relevant advisor? The commission should just give us his name. The commission continues: “… in placing the document in his confidential ‘shredding tray’ for disposal without enveloping it. It was clear from the evidence” that the investigator received that this advisor “was perhaps more acutely aware than anyone as to the sensitivity of this document …”. So if this advisor is so acutely aware of the sensitivity of the document and still tossed it into a bin for all to see what the heck are the rest of them doing? The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet comes out of this situation looking very shaky and shoddy and we need some answers about how its security is being tidied up.