(Open Letter to the Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament)
Dear Mr. Mallard.
Purposes
The purposes of this Act are, consistently with the principle of
the Executive Government’s responsibility to Parliament,—
(a) to increase progressively the availability of official information
to the people of New Zealand in order—
(i) to enable their more effective participation in the
making and administration of laws and policies; and
(ii) to promote the accountability of Ministers of the Crown and
officials,—
and thereby to enhance respect for the law and to promote the
good government of New Zealand:
I am writing to complain that the Ombudsman's office has, in at
least one instance, acted contrary to the Purposes of the Official
Information Act 1982 for reasons of political bias.
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It has attempted to frustrate my participation in the making
and administration of laws and policies and
-
it has reduced the accountability of one Minister of the Crown,
in particular.
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This diminishes my respect for the law and
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undermines the good government of New Zealand.
I have occasionally had somewhat similar experiences with the Ombudsman's
Office in the past as well, but this is a particularly obvious and
provable example, and it gives rise to several complaints on my part.
In the course of writing this letter, it has
occurred to me that part of the problem might be a misunderstanding.
It is probable that both the Minister involved and the official in
the Ombudsman's office are Feminists, of course, but they may also
share an unspoken assumption that, once the sheer number of perceived
women's issues appears to reach a certain level, that requires a dedicated
Ministry for Women, as opposed to dealing with the issues separately.
However, if that is the case, they are too deeply committed to their
"Feminist religion" to see the need to make this unspoken
assumption explicit. That has made them both too irrational to understand
that information relating to a dedicated Ministry for Women must include
the phrase "dedicated Ministry for Women", or some
equivalent phrase -- unless the above unspoken assumption is made
explicit.
FIRST COMPLAINT
"If you are seeking confirmation that such a set of criteria
is not held, you are able to ask for this."
"If what you are seeking is confirmation that particular
information is not held, you can confirm this with the Minister."
"First, therefore, under the Official Information Act,
could you please clearly state whether you do or do not have information
which specifically deals with the issue of whether (to use your
words) the so-called 'gender pay gap', the number of women in leadership
positions, family violence and sexual violence are better addressed
by a dedicated Ministry (for women)?"
The point was that many issues are dealt with without creating a
ministry dedicated to a particular societal group. For example, men
do not have a dedicated ministry, although many issues that affect
men are dealt with by Government.
However, in his letter of 23
May 2019, Mr. Nick Kennedy, having given me the above advice,
refused to take any action when the Minister did not comply with the
request that Mr. Kennedy himself had advised me to make!
SECOND COMPLAINT
When writing to the Minister as above, I did not use the word "criteria",
which Mr. Kennedy wanted me to use, because it seemed to me inappropriate
and outside the scope of his legal powers for the Ombudsmen to tell
me what wording I should use, in the absence of any evidence that
the Minister had misunderstood my question as originally worded by
me. In several emails and letters, I have focussed on the phrase "better
addressed by a dedicated Ministry" and the Minister has steadfastly
avoided providing any information which included that phrase, or anything
similar. The Ombudsman's office has ignored that issue.
THIRD COMPLAINT
Moreover, Mr. Kennedy stated a gross untruth, as follows:
In his letter of 23 May 2019,
Mr. Kennedy cites my above request to the Minister, i.e.:
"First, therefore, under the Official Information Act,
could you please clearly state whether you do or do not have information
which specifically deals with the issue of whether (to use your
words) the so-called 'gender pay gap', the number of women in leadership
positions, family violence and sexual violence are better addressed
by a dedicated Ministry (for women)?"
Then he states:
"This is the second time you have made such a request..."
I deny that I had ever made that request before, which was the result
of Mr. Kennedy's own suggestion, as explained above. It had not previously
occurred to me to comply with his suggestions, because they seemed
to me to be bossy in nature and to advise unnecessary courses of action.
FOURTH COMPLAINT
Mr. Kennedy's earlier letter, dated 29
March 2019, is -- in retrospect -- by far the most corrupt of
his letters. I did not treat it as such at the time. Since decisions
of the Ombudsmen (unless they relate to his jurisdiction) cannot be
challenged in the courts, I have mostly tended to assume good faith
on the part of the staff of the Ombudsman's office. If they are in
fact corrupt, almost all I can do is write to you -- and I am not
aware of any precedent for the Speaker taking any action on the basis
of a complaint about the Ombudsman's office.
Mr. Kennedy wrote:
"The Minister responded to your request, providing you
with links to various sources of publicly available information
which the Minister considered responded to your request, being what
he considered as evidence that the issues were better addressed
by a dedicated Ministry."
Mr. Kennedy considered that to be sufficient response on the Minister's
part. My point, which he ignored, was that none of that information
mentioned the phrase "dedicated Ministry" (or equivalent)
and that the information supplied by the Minister was therefore irrelevant.
Given Mr. Kennedy's suggestion that I use the term "criteria",
I now wonder if both he and the Minister had some unspoken assumption
that, once the number and scale of perceived problems reached a certain
level, the most practical solution was to create a dedicated Ministry.
However, neither the Minister nor Mr. Kennedy has ever made any statement
to me along those lines.
If these two individuals held such a belief,
they should have stated it.
FIFTH COMPLAINT
"It is apparent, however, that your disagreement with
the decision stems more from your well-established opposition to
the broadly agreed upon societal inequalities that exist for women
in modern society. This seems clear not only from your correspondence
on this complaint, but in previous complaints to this Office."
It is grotesquely corrupt for Mr. Kennedy to refer to the substance
of the issues as to which the Minister and I obviously disagree --
and especially to pretend that my disagreement with his decision is
based on those substantive issues. Moreover, he mis-states those substantive
issues. Moreover, he uses the phrase "broadly agreed upon"
without citing evidence or referring to the totalitarian methods (of
which his own corruption is a typical part) by which any such broad
agreement might have been achieved or is maintained.
Mr. Kennedy is showing his bias here and making
a political decision, instead of holding the Minister to his legal
duty to provide information which is relevant to the phrase "dedicated
ministry".
SIXTH COMPLAINT
On 29 March 2019, Mr. Kennedy
further states:
"The OIA is not a mechanism for complainants to require
an agency to produce information, provide explanations or debate
a general issue (outside of the very specific circumstances set
out in section 22 and 23 of the OIA)."
"to increase progressively the availability of official
information to the people of New Zealand."
Moreover, Mr. Kennedy was obviously claiming that I was requiring
an agency to produce information, provide explanations or debate a
general issue. Obviously, I was requiring the Minister to produce
information, but I was certainly not asking him to provide explanations
or debate a general issue and Mr. Kennedy does not provide any evidence
that I was doing either of those things. In his
email of 26 March 2019, he had used the fact that I had used the
word "evidence" as evidence that I was debating with the
Minister. However, in my email of
28 March 2019, I was able to point out that I was merely using
a word that had originally been used by the Minister himself and that
I could have used the word "information", without changing
the meaning of what I was saying.
SEVENTH COMPLAINT
In my email of 12 May 2015,
I complained to the Ombudsman that the reply
from the Minister dated 7 May 2019 contained an incoherent sentence
which made no grammatical sense and conveyed no information. However,
Mr. Kennedy's reply dated 23 May
2019 said that he was refusing to take any action.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Zohrab
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