Watchdog’s eye welcome — Ardern

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she welcomes the Ombudsman deciding if the 33-page document on the coalition talks she is withholding from the public should be released.

Although the document had not been given to ministers, New Zealand First ministers had a copy, she said.

But Cabinet minister Tracey Martin says she has it in her capacity as a NZ First negotiator, not a minister.

National leader Bill English used his first Question Time up against Ardern to highlight the fact she is withholding the document — a document Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said would be released.

Front bencher Gerry Brownlee accused the Government of having “a secret agenda”.

Peters originally revealed the existence of the larger document at a press conference on October 25, after the thin eight-page coalition document had been revealed.

He had said it was still being finalised and it would be released.

He said, for example, that it held an agreement that political appointments to diplomatic posts would be a rarity and that New Zealand would be appointing the best people to represent NZ overseas.

“I don’t expect people to join Foreign Affairs and work their butt off and train for a career and be superseded and passed over by politicians seeking to live out their lives in luxury somewhere else,” he said at the time.

“It is going to be released at some point but these are projects — the Prime Minister will explain better than I and it is her responsibility to explain it but — these are directives to ministers with accountability and media strategies to ensure that the coalition works, not in a jealous, envious way . . . but as a Government [that] successfully, cohesively works.”

Ardern told the House that during the course of negotiations, several documents were exchanged. The coalition paper had been released.

“As for any other documentation through the course of the negotiation, we’ve been open that they have existed. That does not mean that those are firm commitments that we have signed up to, nor that they will ever be progressed.

“I welcome the Ombudsman looking at this issues,” Ardern said. “I welcome him making a decision on whether or not we’ve made the right classification of this documentation.”

Newsroom is understood to have appealed to the Ombudsman after being refused the document.

National deputy leader Paula Bennett also asked Peters about the document, which he said had been cut from 38 pages to 33 because a staff member had changed the font size.

Asked if it was a ministerial staffer, he said it was someone who worked for NZ First — an important distinction because government ministers and officials are subject to the Official Information Act, but parties are not.

Speaking to reporters after Question Time, Peters said more work was being done: “We are working on various things as to their viability and if they stack up in terms of the budgeting commitments we’ve got and we don’t know exactly what the state of the economy is.

“Until we know all those things, we won’t be able to release the work we have been engaged on.”