Two ways to look at MP’s involvement dealt with Boag privately in June, it is unlikely she would have tempted fate by sending similar information to an inexperienced MP. Woodhouse said when he saw the first stories about the privacy breach on current cas
THERE are two ways to look at Michael Woodhouse’s involvement in the National Party’s scandal over the patient information privacy breach.
The first is that he used sound judgement as a senior frontbench MP and health spokesman.
He immediately recognised that what former party stalwart Michelle Boag had sent him back in June was information he should not have.
So firm was he of that view that he didn’t even open the next three emails she sent which, according to him, had resembled the first email, a spreadsheet containing the names, dates of birth and isolation facilities in which people with Covid19 had tested positive.
He did not undertake the same actions that cost Hamish Walker his job: he did not forward the information to the media or to anybody. He did not even mention it to another person until Tuesday night last week, after Walker’s public confession.
That is when Woodhouse told his leader, Todd Muller.
That is when Woodhouse deleted the emails.
Woodhouse has become a greater focus not only because of the revelations of Friday that he had also been given similar information by Boag but because of how he came to tell the leadership and what they did about it.
The facts are not in dispute as to when he received the material and what he did and did not do subsequent to that.
The other way of looking at Woodhouse’s involvement is less generous than his position of righteous nonaction.
As health spokesman he, more than any member of the caucus apart from Shane Reti, would have known how wrong it was for Boag to have sent patient names to him.
He could have done something about it then, such as to tell Boag it was wrong, or taking it up with Boag’s close friend and deputy leader Nikki Kaye, to talk to her, or with leader Muller.
Had senior parliamentary figures received the identical information to Walker, which is dancing on the head of a pin.
By all accounts the information was patient information of current cases, but simply for a different time period. It was not different in any meaningful way.
Woodhouse was a strong supporter of Simon Bridges during the Muller coup and kept his health job because of his strong performance to date.
But if Parliament was sitting this week, National would have major credibility issues demanding answers from the Government on Covid19 questions, especially on the health front.
When it resumes on July 21 there will be only three more sitting weeks and nine weeks to the election. He has lost some respect in the health sector through this episode.
Woodhouse is having some down time while the party assesses the damage and tries to get back on track.
Certainly Walker’s resignation has not cauterised the wounds to National.
Incidentally, while Boag specialised in dealing with private information, much of the material in the emails, except patient names and dates of birth, was publicly available.
The Ministry of Health in its daily update of current Covid19 cases gives the travel origins and travel route of each positive case, as well as the hotel or facility the person was in when they tested positive.
For example the latest statement yesterday says the one new case is a woman in her 20s who arrived in New Zealand on July 4 from Rome, via Doha and Sydney, and that she had been in managed isolation at the Christchurch Commodore Airport Hotel.
One can only guess what Boag’s motives were in sharing the information she had been sent in confidence with Woodhouse and Walker because she has not said.
But if she had wanted to help Walker prove the country of origin of New Zealand’s positive Covid19 cases, she could have pointed him to the Ministry of Health press statements.