So much for openness

The new Government already seems to be ratting on its promises about openness. Labour’s shiftiness over the 38-page document first revealed by Winston Peters suggests that the government will be open when it suits, and not when it doesn’t.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she doesn’t have to release the coalition-building document because it’s not official. Her chief enforcer, Heather Simpson, says ‘‘official information’’ is only information ‘‘held by a minister in his official capacity’’. Whereas the coalition negotiations were done only by party leaders, not ministers.

This is an outrageous legalism which flouts the spirit of the Official Information Act. It suggests that this Government, despite all its pollyannaish promises about openness, will be just as pedantic, self-serving and secretive as any other.

That is disgraceful and possibly something of a record. Usually governments start out preaching openness and end up doing the opposite. But this new government is less than 100 days old.

We don’t know what’s in this document, but it is presumably something embarrassing at least to Labour and possibly also to NZ First. Otherwise why suppress it?

Another extremely bad signal about openness has been sent by the Minister of Open Government, Clare Curran. She says she doesn’t see a need for an overhaul of the Official Information Act.

However, she says she would dust off the 2012 Law Commission review of the Act, a report which was ignored by the previous National-led government.

Curran’s ignorance in this area almost defies belief. She has spent nine years in opposition and apparently doesn’t know that the Law Commission recommended a complete rewriting of the Act, and for very good reasons.

In particular the commission said the law needs to be extended to Parliament. This is in fact a yawning gulf in our freedom of information legislation. At the moment, ministers’ spending comes under the Act.

The spending of other MPs doesn’t.

At the same time it is simply outrageous to hear Bill English praising his Government’s record of openness.

English’s own behaviour in the matter of the scandal over Todd Barclay shows that his claim is an untruth. So does Murray McCully’s record over the Saudi prince who allegedly threatened to sue the Government.

Finally, that champion of openness, the Green Party, has also been caught out. Its new MP, Golriz Ghahraman, boasted of her record as a human rights lawyer putting on trial world leaders who abused their power.

Now it emerges that she also helped defend a man later convicted of war crimes in the Rwandan genocide.

It’s hopeless for Ghahraman and fellow lawyers to argue that ‘‘human rights lawyers’’ might defend as well as prosecute the bad guys. This is not what the average voter would have understood.

And people who preach openness shouldn’t revert to legalisms to get out of a political hole.