Why Ardern won't sack Broadcasting Minister over fateful meeting

Those baying for Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran to be sacked over her breakfast meeting with RNZ’s head of content Carol Hirschfeld will be baying for a while yet.

There are those expecting Curran to follow Hirschfeld out the door after Hirschfeld resigned for misleading her bosses about a breakfast meeting with Curran back in December.

Curran has hardly covered herself in glory, but her actions fall short of the sackable offence of misleading the Prime Minister.

Curran’s actions were clumsy, stupid, naı¨ve and arrogant, yes.

She should never have invited Hirschfeld to meet with her on that fateful morning — a meeting that was taking place just two days before her first meeting with the RNZ board.

She should have been more forthcoming about that meeting once asked, rather than leave the impression of a cover-up by having information dragged out under questioning by National MP Melissa Lee.

It remains unclear what was discussed — given the atrocious acoustics when Astoria is crowded it is possible even Curran and Hirschfeld do not know.

PM Jacinda Ardern described it as a discussion about RNZ’s future, mostly information that was already in the public domain. That indicates it related to Labour’s plan for a $38 million super-charged RNZ. Curran could simply have been hoping for tips ahead of a board meeting two days later.

It was a case of a new minister getting over-eager and over-stepping boundaries she would have excoriated a National minister for crossing.

But Curran cannot be blamed for Hirschfeld’s resignation. According to RNZ’s chief executive, Paul Thompson, Hirschfeld told her bosses more than once the meeting with Curran happened by coincidence rather than design.

That continued even after Curran’s office advised RNZ it was a preplanned meeting.

Curran’s office took that step straight after Thompson and board chairman Richard Griffin told a Parliamentary select committee the two had just bumped into each other one morning after Hirschfeld’s gym workout.

But Curran did not move to correct that information publicly or with the select committee in question — National leader Simon Bridges has questioned whether she should have done so.

Curran’s other lapse was failing to include that meeting with Hirschfeld in her initial answer to a Parliamentary question from National’s Melissa Lee about which RNZ staff she had met with. That is her most serious lapse — it was added only after Lee pressed her on it. It is also unexplainable.

The meeting had already been reported by media commentator John Drinnan. Asked about it, Curran defended leaving it off the parliamentary answer because it was not an “official” meeting.

It will have done some damage — any minister who the Prime Minister has to waste time defending ends up one strike down. Curran should be reprimanded.

But Ardern will go to some lengths not to lose a minister just five months into her new Government. Not only will it help National seed the impression Labour does not have the chops to govern but Ardern’s first sacking of a minister will set a precedent.

She cannot take that step lightly or on flimsy grounds — for after that point other ministers must be held to the same standard. Bridges said more questioning was required, with the look of a cat which is looking forward to a long, drawn-out period of tormenting its prey before it lets go.