Handley met Labour president

‘Robust process’

Derek Handley met Labour Party president Nigel Haworth to offer his services to Labour long before being offered the role of chief technology officer (CTO).

That meeting, which happened before Labour came to power, resulted in a phone call from the prime minister’s acting chief of staff Gordon Jon Thompson, where Handley again pitched his help in broad terms.

Handley also sent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern a Whatsapp message in November, 2017, asking how he could ‘‘explore how I can help or what role I could play in support of you’’. Ardern did not respond.

But many months later Handley was verbally offered the $400,000 government role.

That job application has now seen the resignation of a Cabinet minister and weeks of negative attention for the Government.

The Government released a large tranche of documents relating to the Handley affair yesterday, adding to the public disclosure that Handley himself made earlier in the week.

One of the documents reveals Thompson phoned Handley in December to discuss Handley’s offer of help in broad terms following a meeting with a ‘‘senior Labour party official’’.

Labour Party president Nigel Haworth confirmed to Stuff he was that official.

He said he met Handley in June before Labour came to power for a broad discussion about technology and then had a follow-up email from Handley after they election where he offered his help.

The CTO role was not directly discussed as the conversation was much more broad. In fact, Handley was not even an applicant in the initial round of applications for the role.

Haworth said he passed this on to Thompson to deal with.

Government Digital Services Minister Megan Woods said these The State Services Commission, which oversees the public service, was asked to look into the process behind the appointment in August.

The commission asked Crown Law to look into it on its behalf. Crown Law found the ‘‘evidence suggested a suitably robust recruitment process’’.

‘‘A lay observer, fully informed of the facts, would not reasonably suspect that Ms Curran was biased,’’ the commission wrote. ‘‘Viewed objectively, the meeting between Ms Curran and Mr Handley before the appointment process commenced, did not prejudice the process.’’ meetings had no bearing on the eventual offer.

She pointed out that Handley’s repeated attempts to communicate with Ardern make clear the offer of help had not been taken up.

Handley was verbally offered the CTO role, before questions about how then-minister Clare Curran had arranged the job led to her being fired from Cabinet and the job being rescoped.

Curran had emailed Handley on her personal Gmail account and set up an evening meeting in the Beehive to discuss the role, a meeting she then failed to declare to Parliament when asked about it in questions from the Opposition.