Peters takes aim at MSD over leak
Thomas Manch thomas.manch@stuff.co.nz
Former deputy prime minister Winston Peters’ years-long legal pursuit over the leaking of his superannuation overpayment now rests on a single claim: Government chief executives breached his privacy by speaking his name.
Peters was revealed to have been overpaid a pension for seven years in 2017, because of an error in which he failed to declare he had lived with a partner, Jan Trotman. An anonymous tipster informed the media about the overpayment weeks out from the general election.
An incensed Peters sued over the claimed privacy breach, taking to the High Court former National ministers Paula Bennett and Anne Tolley, and the Attorney-General on behalf of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), the ministry’s then-chief executive Brendan Boyle, and the Public Services Commissioner.
He lost, and was ordered to pay more than $317,000 in legal costs. Yesterday Peters was across the road from the Beehive trying to overturn the High Court’s judgment at the Court of Appeal.
The source of the leaked details had not been established in any court, however Peters has used the legal protection of parliamentary privilege, while in the House as an MP, to allege that a former National Party press secretary Rachel Morton was behind
the leak. Morton has ‘‘categorically’’ denied Peters’ allegation, saying she was never in the meeting where he alleged the information was shared.
Peters’ lawyer Brian Henry yesterday shifted the focus of the case to MSD, for its disclosure of the details of Peters’ receiving a pension overpayment to the ministers under the ‘‘no surprises’’ policy.
He said the ‘‘repugnant’’ breach of privacy occurred when Boyle verbally briefed Tolley, the social development minister at the time, on Peters’ overpayment.
He asserted that Boyle was right to brief Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes on the overpayment, but Hughes was also wrong to brief Bennett, state services minister at the time.
Henry said briefings to ministers should only have divulged Peters’ name if there was fraud involved, as such details were not needed to assure ministers of the integrity of the superannuation system.
Both MSD and the High Court determined Peters had not defrauded the organisation, but that the overpayment was the result of an error in completing a written form. ‘‘We have a prominent person, we have a case where this happened and this is what was done. But they have no basis, in privacy rules, to divulge the name and detail of the beneficiary,’’ Henry said.