Source: Radio New Zealand
PSA’s national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Public Service Association says the Health Minister is blaming officials for slow Official Information Act (OIA) responses when his government’s cuts are at fault.
The Ombudsman stepped in over official documents slated for “proactive release” for an official information request first made in March. The final documents related to the request were not released until November.
Simeon Brown’s office has demanded improvement from officials, telling the Ombudsman the delays were in part caused by the volume of OIA requests.
“The delays in this case have been in part due to a higher number of OIAs on the Government’s health reforms causing resourcing pressures,” the Ombudsman’s office said.
“The Minister’s office has advised that the Minister directed officials to prioritise improvements to the proactive release programme so that future publications are timely, accurate and better supported.”
Health Minister Simeon Brown. RNZ / Mark Papalii
However, the PSA’s national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons told RNZ the minister should be taking responsibility instead.
“It shouldn’t take the Ombudsman stepping in for Health NZ to provide information to the public, but really this does come back to the minister. He can’t keep demanding savings and then blame officials when the impacts of cuts are felt,” she said.
“Health NZ has lost over 2000 roles either through early exits, voluntary redundancies, or vacancies not being filled. This includes teams that support official information requests. They’ve lost critical expertise.”
She said it was no wonder the public wanted information when the government was making such cuts, and the minister, his office, and health agencies should have seen it coming.
“This government is undermining the Official Information Act. It plays an absolutely critical role in enabling the participation of the people of New Zealand in public administration, but also in holding ministers and officials to account.”
‘This is not a one off’
Labour deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni said it was a case of the government not doing its job.
“We’re concerned this is not the exception, this is not a one off, we’re seeing this more and more with health in particular, but across many of the government agencies,” she said.
She said Labour bore no responsibility for its health reforms increasing pressures on officials, and cuts would have had an effect, she said.
“They’ve stated openly those cuts would mostly be made to the back office, well we know that many of the people … needed to respond to Official Information Act requests are back-office workers.
“Now they’re in a position that they can’t respond to what they’re legally required to respond to in the period of time stipulated in the law.”
Sepuloni said New Zealand was well known for its transparency and timely official information responses were an important part of that, “but that has been compromised by this government”.
Labour deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni. RNZ / Angus Dreaver
In a statement, Minister Brown said the agency had advised him it was appropriately resourced to fulfil its OIA obligations, “and knows that is my expectation”.
“Health NZ has been working to improve processes around the proactive release of information as well as regularly updating publicly available data,” he said.
“I’m advised Health NZ has had discussions with the Office of the Ombudsman around the work it is doing to ensure it complies with its obligations.”
Months of delays
RNZ had first requested documents about the government’s just-announced 24/7 telehealth service in March 2025.
That request was rejected, with Health NZ claiming it held no such procurement or planning information that would not impact commercial negotiations.
That was despite Health NZ not using a competitive process, instead inviting specific providers that were already offering such services to join its subsidy-based online portal.
That unusual approach was revealed in the first tranche of documents released in a late response to a second request made in early July after the service launched, with Health NZ promising the remaining documents would be released “as soon as possible”.
A follow-up in September asking when the remaining documents would be released was treated as another official information request.
Three of the five documents in the second tranche were released in mid-October, the remaining two were released in November.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
