Ministry of Health would decide if Minister of Health is prosecuted!

A reader writes in:

I made a complaint to the NZ Police about the Minister of Health breaching the lockdown through the Police’s online COVID-19 L4 breach form on 3/4/20. This was the mountain biking incident.

Having learned of David Clark’s second breach with a 20km drive to the beach several days later I personally rang the Police to lay a further complaint & follow up on my original complaint.

Here’s the main point – when asking the Police why they have not prosecuted the minister they told me all breach cases are referred to THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH, who recommend whether to prosecute. The very same ministry that is run by Minister of Health David Clark, the offender. I told the Police officer that this is an obvious conflict of interest and the chances of the ministry of reccommending prosecution against their own minister is non existent but to no avail.

Personally I don’t think Clark broke the law – he just set an awful example.

But it is an interesting point that the Police have effectively outsourced the decisions on prosecutions to the Ministry of Health. That is constitutionally dubious at the best of times, but in this particular case even worse that the Ministry of Health would have to tell Police whether or not to investigate or prosecute their own Minister!