Zombie shambles on, not quite dead
Amused to get an e-mail today from DIA telling me that they are releasing some information to Nicky Hager, showing records of any phone, text or e-mails between myself and staff in the PM’s Office over a period of four years.
It’s like someone is trying to resurrect the Dirty Politics zombie.
Anyway what did searching four years of communications find.
Well based on my quick tally, it shows the following number of phone calls to me from the staff OIAd (excluding one minute ones which will be missed calls).
- Jason Ede 20 (one every two months)
- Wayne Eagleson 11 (one every four months)
- Phil de Joux 10 (one every four months)
- Kevin Taylor 3 (one a year)
It also reveals four text messages from Wayne Eagleson over four years. Quick someone impanel a grand jury!
I’d say on an average day I get 10 or more phone calls so over four years that is well over 10,000 phone calls which puts a couple of dozen calls into context.
And a total of five e-mails over four years, being:
- Me asking Wayne if the PM would be free to meet Tim Berner-Lees, the inventor of the World Wide Web
- Wayne e-mailing me a press release about staffing changes
- Me e-mailing Wayne (and several other staff) asking for examples (good and bad) of dealing with ministerial advisors, for use in an IPANZ workshop
- Me e-mailing Kevin Taylor inviting him to Kiwiblog’s 10th birthday party
- Me e-mailing Wayne after the 2014 election asking to meet up to discuss the flag change campaign (readers may enjoy the NB at the bottom of my e-mail)
Such an evil conspiracy – trying to get the PM to meet the guy who invented the WWW, and being sent a copy of a press release.
Below is the e-mail from DIA:
Good morning David,
This email is to advise you that the Department of Internal Affairs has received an OIA request from Nicky Hager for:
- correspondence between Jason Ede and Mr Slater and Mr Farrar from January 2008 to December 2011, including texts;
- the same information between Phil de Joux, Kevin Taylor, Wayne Eagleson and Mr Slater or Mr Farrar from January 2011 to 11 March 2015; and
- correspondence between DIA employees [in the Prime Minister’s office] and Jason Ede from January 2011 to 11 March 2015.
This request was originally made to Rt Hon Sir John Key’s office in 2015, and was subject of a complaint to the Ombudsman in 2016. The complaint had not been resolved at the time of the change of Government last year, and the Ombudsman accordingly advised Mr Hager that he could renew his request to the Department, which he has.
I have attached for your information the documents that the Department has determined as being in scope of Mr Hager’s request and which contain your name. The Department has made the decision to withhold the names of those staff that are not named in Mr Hager’s request, and the phone numbers of all parties. We do not consider that there are grounds to withhold any other information from these documents.
We will be indicating in our response to Mr Hager in relation to the extracts from Vodafone invoices that the Department does not hold any records that indicate the nature of the communications i.e. if any calls or texts between individuals were made in a private capacity or in an official capacity as an employee in the office of the Prime Minister. We will also be indicating that there are no records of any emails between yourself and Jason Ede or Phil de Joux.
The Department is planning to send the information to Mr Hager tomorrow (Friday 24 August 2018).
And the attachments are here: