For the best overall guide to what has happened in the Budget leak/hack scandal, see the just-published article by Henry Cooke: What we know and don’t know about the Budget ‘hack’. Amongst his rundown on the background to the scandal and the theories offered so far, Cooke points out that, rather than being hacked, the Treasury website might simply have been scanned by Google, allowing a cache of pages to become available to someone who has handed them on to the National Party.

Another leading explanation for how the Treasury’s Budget information was released early to National comes down to a simple but obvious idea that parliamentary staffers looked for and found the information on the Treasury website. This would also explain how National leader Simon Bridges could be so categorical in his insistence that his scoops weren’t based on hacking or illegality.

According to this theory, National had one of its Parliamentary staffers monitoring the Treasury website in the days leading up to Budget Day, constantly using the frontpage search bar on the site to look for “Budget 2019”. The hope being that at some stage some Budget documents would be loaded onto the site momentarily, in anticipation of Thursday’s publication, before they were then locked away for safety.

The story goes that by searching every five minutes or so, the National staffer eventually hit the jackpot when documents or pages turned up with the goods. It might have taken hundreds or even thousands of searches over a couple of days.

In fact, National Party pollster and blogger David Farrar has outlined a similar scenario based on his previous experience as a parliamentary staffer: “when I worked for the Opposition in 2000 or 2001, I recall waiting for the Government to release the Police crime stats. They always put a positive spin on it. I went to the Police website and looked at last year’s stats. I also looked at the previous year. They had the same URL format. I changed the year to the current one, and hey presto I had the official crime states four hours before the Government was due to release them” – see: My guess as to what happened.

Farrar argues that something similar may have happened, and it therefore wouldn’t constitute hacking: “So my guess is something similar has happened. That possibly the material was put up on a website of some sort and someone found it. Treasury are calling it hacking because they didn’t think it was open to the public. But there is a difference between hacking a secure computer system, and locating information that is on the Internet (even if hidden). Was there any cracking of passwords for example?”

But do such explanations fit with what Treasury are saying when they claim that their site has been “deliberately and systematically hacked”? It’s arguable either way. Certainly, some tech-specialists seem to think that something much more sophisticated must have happened – especially based on the fact that Treasury has called in the Police. For one of the most in-depth discussions of the potential hacking, see John Anthony’s Budget 2019: ‘They’ll remember it as the budget that got hacked’.

Despite some tech specialists believing that a sophisticated hack has occurred, one expert believes a software application might have simply found the material on the Treasury website: “Kiwi cyber security consultancy Darkscope technical director Joerg Buss said a likely scenario was that someone used a ‘spider or crawler’ program to find hidden content in the Treasury website. Such software may have uncovered Budget 2019 files which had not been protected properly, he said.”

It could also be as simple as using Google to search for the material, which is covered by Juha Saarinen in his article, Conspiracy or cock-up? Strong evidence Treasury published Budget accidentally – rather than a hack. He says that “screenshots of the results from a Google search for ‘estimates of appropriation 2019/2020’ are circulating on Twitter suggest that the data was published accidentally.”

Of course, the fact that Treasury has called in the Police would suggest that the government department believes that something much more sinister or malevolent has occurred. However, care needs to be taken in reading too much into this – especially since the Police haven’t even confirmed that they have agreed to investigate, except to say that they are assessing Treasury’s request.

Furthermore, whenever governments and officials call in the police or make claims that criminal actions have occurred in the political sphere, we should always be very sceptical. It’s the oldest trick in the bureaucratic book – to divert attention or to impugn an opponent with charges that they are mixed up in criminal activity. That’s not necessarily the case over the controversial budget leaks – it’s still far too early to tell what has happened.

This is certainly the argument made today by leftwing blogger No Right Turn, who suggests that government officials have a tendency, when they’ve made mistakes, to try to point the finger elsewhere, often using rather draconian measures to do so – see: Treasury, “hacking”, and incentives.

Here’s his main point about how politicians and officials are inclined to bring the police into politics: “Unfortunately the natural instincts of power in New Zealand are to double down rather than admit a mistake, and to call in the police when embarrassed – just look at the tea tape, or Dirty Politics. With those, we saw police raiding newsrooms and journalist’s homes. I’m wondering if we’re going to see police raiding the opposition this time. Which would be highly damaging to our democracy.”

The blogger says that “the bureaucratic incentive towards arse-covering and blame-avoidance pushes that to be reclassified as nefarious ‘hacking’, and that incentive gets stronger the higher up the chain (and the further away from IT knowledge) you get.”

Here’s his own explanation for the release of the information: “The most likely scenario is that Treasury f**ked up and left them lying around on their web-server for anyone to read, and National or one of its proxies noticed this and exploited it. Accessing unprotected data on a public web-server isn’t ‘hacking’ in any sense of the word – it’s just browsing.”

The onus is therefore on the Treasury to be much more transparent about what has happened writes Danyl Mclauchlan, saying a “brief technical explanation about what the ‘hack’ amounted to would be a lot more useful than all the bluster and nebulous waffle we’ve heard so far” – see: Budget hacking scandal: About time Treasury told us what actually happened.

Mclauchlan says that if it turns out that the leak has simply come from information on the Treasury website, “then we’ll be talking about the resignation of the Treasury Secretary, rather than National Party leader.”

The No Right Turn blogger doesn’t see the Government delivering such transparency any time soon: “neither Treasury nor their Minister has any interest in that (Ministers are rarely interested in incompetence in their own agencies, because it makes them look bad for allowing it). As for us, the public, we’re the loser, stuck with an incompetent, arse-covering public agency which has just failed on one of its most important tasks” – see: Treasury owes us answers.

He argues that the decision to go to the Police means that Treasury can now sidestep such accountability: “conveniently, by referring the matter to the police Treasury has ensured that they can never do that. It might prejudice the police investigation, you see. OIA requests can be refused to avoid prejudice to the maintenance of the law, and anyone who actually tells anyone anything can be prosecuted. Accountability of course goes out the window”.

That doesn’t get National off the hook, however, if the party has done something illegal in the way they have procured or used the Budget information. One lawyer who knows a lot about hacks is Steven Price, and he argues that the release by National of the information was not in “the public interest”, and that it appears to have “broken the law relating to Breach of Confidence” – see: Budget leak: Nats’ behaviour “entirely appropriate”?

Price says that he is “irritated at the sanctimoniousness of Simon Bridges’ denial that the Nats had done ‘anything approaching’ illegality.” He does admit however, that if National have obtained the Budget information “through some area of Treasury’s (or some other government) website that was technically publicly accessible, then that would at least raise arguments that it wasn’t confidential in the first place, because it was in the public domain.”

Herald political editor Audrey Young is also less than impressed with how Bridges has dealt with the matter today, saying: “Simon Bridges needed to do two things today when he fronted the news media about allegations of hacking Treasury and he did neither. He needed to say, at least in general terms, how he received the leak of Budget of documents. And he needed to say he had contacted the police to offer them any assistance they needed in their investigation” – see: Simon Bridges needed to do two things today and he did neither.

But for another view on the politics of it all, and an explanation of why Bridges’ manoeuvres have been smart, see Brigitte Morten’s National plays strong hand over politics jackpot. She argues that it’s in the public interest for National to be able to dispute the Government’s narrative over Budget spending, and to be able to point out the “lower than expected spending” in areas such as health “that the government doesn’t want you to reflect on.”

Finally, for a recent minor – but extremely colourful – Treasury controversy, involving the use of a transformative wellbeing experiment for staff, see Danyl Mclauchlan’s must-read investigation: Peace, Rest and the Monkey Emoji Moon: playing Heartwork cards at Treasury.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

As a political commentator, I’ve never experienced anything like it – the phone calls and email requests for interviews from international media have been constant. Broadcasters and journalists all want to discuss the Christchurch terrorist attack and the aftermath. But mostly they want to discuss Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

There is a huge fascination with who she is, what she is about, and how she has managed the events following the attacks on Muslims in Christchurch two weeks ago. For example, yesterday, I spent two hours talking to a German journalist who had flown over here specifically to write a major profile on Ardern for readers in that country.

The strong consensus – both here and abroad – is that Ardern has demonstrated extraordinarily impressive leadership since the terrorist atrocities. Numerous commentaries have celebrated her emotional and empathetic response, combined with her strength and “steeliness” in taking decisive action on matters such as gun control and victim support, her correctness in labelling the murders as “terrorism”, and her ability to project and foster unity (when there is a tendency towards division, even from many of her own supporters).

Below are some of the more interesting articles published in response to Ardern’s handling of the terrorist attacks.

One of the first important international articles praising Ardern’s performance was by academic and Washington Post foreign affairs writer, Ishaan Tharoor – see: The world is watching New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. In this, he outlined the Prime Minister’s previous progressive credentials, which had “burnished her image as a global feminist icon”, and painted her handling of the Christchurch situation as a continuation of this trend.

Also in the Washington Post, Anna Fifield has written a good overall account of the global reaction – see: New Zealand’s prime minister receives worldwide praise for her response to the mosque shootings.

Writing in India, Ahamad Fuwad puts together a list of seven reasons Ardern’s leadership since the atrocity has been a success – see: How to deal with tragedy: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern sets an example for world leaders, emerges as liberal mascot.

Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Nick O’Malley and Deborah Snow labelled Ardern’s leadership as: A masterclass from New Zealand in responding to terror. They asserted Ardern’s achievements: “If there had been quiet criticism in some circles that she was an inexperienced leader with as much stardust as substance, that has now been put to rest. Ardern has been a commanding figure of poise, compassion and strength, a textbook example to other world leaders about how to respond in the face of mass casualty terrorist attacks.”

I’m quoted in this article, on the strategic nature of Ardern’s careful leadership: “Firstly, she seeks to ensure that the division the gunman sought to sow between New Zealand Muslims and the greater community does not take hold. Secondly, she wants to head off the potential for a culture war inside her country, with elements of the left seeking to identify racism in New Zealand society as the cause of the attack and sections of the right using it to impugn immigration or the Islamic community itself. Thirdly Ardern – no doubt on the advice of police and intelligence agencies – has security implications in mind… By positioning New Zealand itself as the victim of the attack as well as its Muslim community, and by demonstrating unity with that community, Ardern is intent on reducing the potential for revenge attacks.”

Writing on this last point, the Guardian’s Jonathan Powell praises Ardern, saying she has “almost single-handedly managed to avoid the attacks becoming a cause of further tit-for-tat violence around the world” – see: If Jacinda Ardern was in No 10, imagine how different Brexit would be.

Powell’s column compares Ardern and Theresa May, saying both are having “to lead as their countries confront one of the greatest man-made crises they have ever faced.” He imagines a scenario in which the countries have swapped leaders: “If the United Kingdom had been led by Ardern we might still have had Brexit, but we would not have ended up with this national humiliation, a divided society and an imperilled economy. If May had been prime minister of New Zealand at her robotic worst, God knows what would have happened after the massacres.”

Ardern’s very high level of emotional intelligence is cited by Powell as the key strength that has allowed her to triumph. And he explains the importance of this quality for leaders dealing with national tragedies: “That is the sort of intelligence a leader needs. They must be able to understand what people feel and channel it, as Blair did at the time of Princess Diana’s death. Ardern managed that brilliantly in the way she expressed the grief of the people of New Zealand about the mass-murder in the mosques.”

Jamila Rizvi, the editor of Future Women magazine discusses whether Ardern’s “typically feminine behaviour” has served her and New Zealand so well – see: Jacinda Ardern just proved typically ‘feminine’ behaviour is powerful.

Rizvi suggests that Ardern is leading in a very different way to her counterparts, throwing away the “traditional script for a world leader reacting to a terrorist attack on home soil”, which is normally about “power and retribution”. As well as pointing out that Ardern has focused on the victims instead of the perpetrator, and put her energy into fostering unity rather than division, she says Ardern is outwardly-focused, rather than trying to get people to concentrate on her: “Instead, she listens. She comforts not by instruction but by making space for the thoughts and feelings of others.”

And politicians everywhere, male and female, could learn from this: “Authenticity and compassion go beyond gender, or race, or religion, or next week’s polling numbers. Authenticity is an atheist leader donning hijab without thinking about the ‘optics’, but simply because it’s the right and respectful thing to do.”

This leads onto perhaps one of the best international pieces about Ardern’s leadership – Rosa Silverman’s Ardern shows the leadership the world has been missing.

First, Silverman outlines how she sees Ardern’s leadership over this period: “infused with emotional intelligence and warmth, she has thrown her arms around a grieving nation and is visibly striving, with every fibre of her being, to heal its still open wounds. This is what leadership looks like. Sometimes you have to see it up close to understand what it is you have been missing. Ardern has walked hand-in-hand with those affected by the horror – literally, but also figuratively. She has pressed her face against theirs, presenting to the world the most powerful image of unity we could hope a politician might give.”

Silverman also contrasts the New Zealand Prime Minister with Theresa May: “When Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, was confronted with a moment like this – the death of 72 people in the Grenfell Tower fire of June 2017 – her response was precisely the opposite: cold, stilted, detached. She projected none of Ardern’s conviction. She did not even meet with survivors the first time she visited the site. Here was a situation crying out for leadership, which our leader was ill-equipped to offer.”

Other world leaders are also being unfavourably compared to Ardern. The Guardian’s Suzanne Moore said “We have seen the qualities that define leadership in such a way that it is clear she is a lioness and that to call so many of our current leaders donkeys is a disservice to hardworking donkeys the world over” – see: Jacinda Ardern is showing the world what real leadership is: sympathy, love and integrity.

As with many such international pieces, this article seized on Ardern’s smackdown of US President Donald Trump: “Asked directly whether she agreed with Donald Trump that rightwing terrorism was not growing, she answered clearly: ‘No.’ How could the US help? ‘Sympathy and love for all Muslim communities.’ Sympathy and love, what kind of leader talks like that in a world where to be tough is to build walls and imprison children or, on our own shores, elevate intransigence and prevarication to new heights?”

In the international media, Ardern is once again being positioned as the “anti-Trump”, and the Financial Times’ Jamie Smyth elaborates on this saying her recent leadership has “cemented her reputation globally as a standard bearer for progressive politics” – see: Jacinda Ardern’s ‘solace and steel’ seen uniting New Zealand.

This article also emphasises that she “confounded domestic critics by displaying a toughness that some doubted she had, publicly criticising Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for attempting to exploit the attacks ahead of the country’s upcoming election.”

All of these actions and words have led to many suggestions that Ardern should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. For the best discussion of this, see Stephanie Mitchell’s International petition pushes for Jacinda Ardern to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

There’s no doubt that Ardern’s moral mandate and authority has been enhanced in the last two weeks. Even critics and opponents have been full of praise for her. See, for example, 1News’ Judith Collins praises Jacinda Ardern’s handling of Christchurch attack, showing respect by wearing headscarf.

Rightwing political commentator Matthew Hooton has expressed his huge admiration for Ardern’s performance and has even compared her to his own political heroes: “For the Prime Minister, it is as if all her past life has been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. In the last week Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated the empathy of Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster and the steely resolve of Margaret Thatcher after the Brighton hotel bombing. Consequently, New Zealand will heal faster than it may have otherwise” – see: After Christchurch, Ardern’s moment has come.

As a result, he says, “the political context has changed. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to use her new-found ascendancy to act decisively across a range of issues. If she really believes in a CGT, for example, she can now be more assertive in demanding Winston Peters fall into line. Similarly, she need no longer defend failing programmes like KiwiBuild but has more freedom to replace them.”

This doesn’t mean that there are no criticisms of Ardern at all, and some are now starting to emerge, as reported by Tracy Watkins in her column, Will Jacinda Ardern keep her ‘halo’ once domestic realities resume?

This mainly covers a column this week in The Australian newspaper, in which economist Judith Sloan criticises the “deification” of the New Zealand prime minister while “selectively” ignoring failures of leadership – such as allowing only a relatively small increase in refugees, and very little progress on the flagship KiwiBuild housing programme. You can see Sloan’s critique of Ardern here: Remove the halo and Ardern is ordinary.

Watkins herself notes that such questions “will only get louder” and politics will return to usual for Ardern: “Once the realities of domestic politics intrude – and they have already, after a week-long political truce – those expectations may run far ahead of what Ardern can realistically deliver.”

Finally, there has been one particular photograph of Jacinda Ardern that has stood out in the aftermath of the Christchurch atrocities – a poignant image of a sorrowful leader in mourning behind coloured-glass. The story behind the image is also very interesting – see Glen McConnell’s Face of empathy: Jacinda Ardern photo resonates with the world after terror attack.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

The week before Christmas was dominated by what may actually have been the most important political issue of the year in New Zealand – revelations that government agencies have spied on New Zealanders through the use of private investigators. The matter ended up being somewhat buried in the end-of-year chaos, and perhaps conveniently forgotten about by politicians with an interest in the issue remaining unresolved.

Yet the story isn’t going away. Today, the Herald published revelations about how the private investigations firm Thompson & Clark was previously employed by government-owned Southern Response insurance to review Official Information Act answers about the use of the private investigations firm itself – see Lucy Bennett’s Megan Woods seeks answers on Southern Response’s use of private investigators.

Here’s the key part of the story: “In January 2017, when Woods was the opposition spokeswoman on the Christchurch quake recovery, Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd (TCIL) invoiced Southern Response $2070 for reviewing a response to an Official Information Act request from the Labour Party research unit on its use of TCIL.”

The article reports on how “TCIL also appears to advise Southern Response on how to circumvent public scrutiny.” For example, Thompson & Clark gave the following advice to Southern Response’s chief executive: “to get around disclosure, privacy and OIA issues, we normally set up a discreet email address for you – in Gmail or similar … do you want us to set up a discreet email account for you – or do you want to?”

The original “explosive” SSC report

Despite the State Services Commission report being released during the busy period just prior to Christmas – leading to what some see as a lack of media coverage and scrutiny of the issues – there have been some excellent articles and columns published about it.

Andrea Vance produced some of the best coverage of the report and the aftermath. Her first report, Security firm spied on politicians, activists and earthquake victims, detailed the full extent of what had been uncovered by the report into government agencies using private investigators. Overall, she said that the “explosive report details a slew of damning revelations”.

Vance followed this up with an in-depth article, Public service bosses ignored warnings about Thompson & Clark for years, which revealed that “for a decade public service bosses ignored the warnings about Thompson & Clark. Their tentacles were everywhere. Dozens of ministries and agencies used their services – and yet no-one in the upper echelons of the public service questioned their reach or influence.”

According to Vance, “officials became drunk on the power of the information offered up by security firms like Thompson & Clark. It allowed them to keep tabs on their critics and stave off any reputational damage.” She also argues that “A cavalier attitude to personal and sensitive information, and a troubling disregard for the democratic right to protest, was allowed to flourish within the public service over 15 years and successive governments.”

Hamish Rutherford produced some excellent analysis, explaining: “In an age where the use of contractors is already under scrutiny, a string of government agencies have effectively outsourced snooping, in some cases for highly questionable reasons. In some cases this was done with a lack of clear contracts, creating a fertile atmosphere for mission creep” – see: Use of private investigators exposes carelessness about role of the government.

Rutherford writes about how remarkable it is that public servants weren’t aware (according to the report) that what was going on was unacceptable. He therefore concludes: “we are reading about public servants who appeared to be seduced by private investigators, who decided to make their job easier without considering the implications for democratic rights, or the need to remain neutral. Weeding out improper behaviour may take work, but it seems the report exposes examples where public servants need to be told what their job involves, which would be a far more fundamental problem.”

RNZ’s Tim Watkin also has some strong analysis of what occurred, saying that the report on the state snooping “is a bit of a page-turner and a terrifying read for anyone who cares about the integrity of the public sector” – see: Heart of Darkness in the public sector.

According to Watkin, the situation is perplexing, given the risk-averse nature of the public service: “My concern is what this says about the culture at the heart of our public service. How did leaders who are by the very definition of their roles meant to be servants of the public decide that this level of covert surveillance was a good idea? Government agencies are typically so risk averse these days that they have multiple managers signing off press statements and an inability to make a decision on which pencils or toilet paper to buy without first clearing it with the minister’s office. Yet they are willing to subject those ‘ordinary New Zealanders” to secret surveillance.”

Possibly, Watkin says it’s the very risk-averse nature of the current public service that has caused them to be more open to snooping on citizens: “there seems to be a deep-seated sense of butt-covering and paranoia”. This is the very point made by Gordon Campbell in his blogpost, On why Thompson + Clark are just the tip of the iceberg.

In recent years, according to Campbell, the public service has become politicised, meaning that public servants have become more sensitive to the political needs of their ministers rather than the public good. This means that snooping on citizens and protestors starts becoming sensible, and to dissent against breaches of ethics in the public service has become much more dangerous for your career.

Not surprisingly, some of the strongest condemnation of state snooping on citizens has come from those organisations known to be affected – especially environmental groups. Former Green co-leader, and now Greenpeace head, Russel Norman emphasises the anti-democratic nature of what has been going on: “The chilling effect of being under constant and intrusive surveillance for simply campaigning on important social issues, fundamentally corrodes what it means to live in a free and democratic society. We’ve learnt that under the previous government, no-one was safe from being spied on if they disagreed with government policy” – see: Rotten to the core: The chilling truth revealed by the SSC report.

Norman concludes: “The State Services Commission (SSC) investigation may well be one of the most important examinations into the inner workings of the state that we’ve seen in New Zealand. I’d go as far as to call it our Watergate moment.”

If that sounds like the expected complaints of an activist, then it’s also worth reading what former United Future leader Peter Dunne had to say in his column, Only a first step in the data battle.

Dunne explains what has occurred as being “a gross breach of that implicit covenant between the Government and its citizens”, and he raises serious questions about how much more privacy is being curtailed by government agencies. In particular: “Was any information provided, formally or informally, to the intelligence services by Thompson and Clark, and was any information gathered at the behest of the intelligence services?”

Newspaper editorials have also condemned what has been uncovered in the public service. The Otago Daily Times has a strongly-worded editorial about the dangers to democracy uncovered in the report: “It blasts a warning about the insidious nature of state power and the need for vigilance and protection. Those who would disregard civil liberties for what they might think is the greater good should think again. Big brother and big sister are an ever-present threat. This is even more so in the electronic age. It was first thought the internet might lead to more freedom and more opportunity for dissent. But the massive losses of privacy, the ease with which data is collected and modern data analysis all hand more potential power and surveillance ability to big business and big government” – see: An ‘affront to democracy’.

In Christchurch, The Press has been asking important questions about what the report has revealed – see the editorial: More questions about spies and the public service. Here are the concluding questions: “The public needs to know more about this scandal that is so contrary to the way we expect our public servants to behave on our behalf. The public wants to know who approved of this surveillance, why it was considered necessary in a democracy and, perhaps most important of all, how much was really known about it by the ministers in charge.”

Will anything actually be done about the spying scandal?

The biggest risk to arise out of the controversial investigation into government agencies’ misuse of spying on citizens is that nothing further will now occur. So despite new stories being published about the state surveillance, there’s a danger that we are coming towards the end of the scandal, with no significant reform being offered to correct the problems.

Although the Thompson & Clark firm has been discredited by the scandal, many are arguing that they are not actually the real problem. For example, Andrea Vance says: “although they took advantage, Thompson & Clark aren’t responsible for public service culture and the undermining of democratic rights. That lies with Peter Hughes. For public confidence to be fully restored, the public service must demonstrate accountability and accept culpability, starting from the top down.”

Perhaps it’s time for a proper official and independent commission of inquiry into the spying problems in the public service. Security analyst Paul Buchanan has been arguing for this. And Gordon Campbell agrees: “given that the Thompson+ Clark problem is a by-product of the politicisation of the public service, security analyst Paul Buchanan is dead right in calling for a public inquiry. Only a wide-ranging investigation can address the attitudinal issues and power relationships between ministerial staff and public servants, of which Thompson + Clark are merely one of the end results.”

Tim Watkin has also argued that more needs to happen: “The proper response to this report is not a few hours of tut-tuting, the Prime Minister expressing formulaic concern that the spying was “disturbing” and the symbolic resignation of a single chair. No, the proper response is a change to the public sector culture. So who will lead that?”

Long-time political activist Murray Horton also proposes an inquiry – see: Thompson & Clark just tip of spyberg. Let’s have an inquiry into whole covert world of state spying. Horton explains the significance of the latest changes in state surveillance of citizens, saying that there’s been two major changes: contracting the spying out (perhaps deliberately in order to escape rules), and expanding the targets beyond just activists.

Other activists – especially those affected by the state spying – put forward proposals for reform in Jessie Chiang’s article, Environmental groups call for change after security firm revelations. For example, Russel Norman calls for prosecutions of those involved, and for the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment to be broken up. And Kevin Hague from Forest and Bird says: “I’m encouraging state services to go back to [learning] how to operate as a state service… and your obligations to the public and not just to the government of the day”.

For more thorough reform suggestions, also see blogger No Right Turn’s A private Stasi. He says “Businesses like Thompson and Clark, whose service is explicitly anti-democratic, need to be made illegal and put out of business.”

Finally, there’s the issue of the breaches of rules by Crown Law when working for the Ministry of Social Development – which Andrea Vance has described as “one of the most shocking findings”. The chief executive of MSD at the time was Peter Hughes, who of course is now chief executive of the State Services Commission, and therefore in charge of the whole of the public service. There will therefore be suspicions of conflicts of interest in terms of resolving that issue, and Hughes has handed the ongoing task to his own deputy at the SSC. For the best discussion of all this, see Aaron Smale’s Hypocrisy at the highest levels.