Staggeringly bad judgment

Stuff reports:

Under-fire National MP Hamish Walker has admitted to passing on the private details of Covid-19 patients to media, which were leaked to him by former party president Michelle Boag.

Walker said he did this to expose Government shortcomings and he has been advised that what he did was not criminal.

But he has apologised to those involved and National leader Todd Muller has stripped him of his portfolios.

Former National Party president Michelle Boag said in a statement on Tuesday that she had passed the information to Walker, which she had received in her role as the acting chief executive of the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust.

“I very much regret my actions and did not anticipate that Hamish would choose to send it on to some media outlets but I am grateful that the media involved have chosen not to publish the 18 names that were contained within it,” Boag said in a statement.

She has resigned as acting chief executive of the trust as a result.

I’m astonished by the staggeringly bad judgment shown by both Michelle and Hamish.

Under no circumstances should Michelle have sent that spreadsheet to Hamish, and under no circumstances should he have sent it to the media. It has private health information in it, being the names of people with Covid-19.

If the desire was to highlight that this information was being sent around in an insecure manner, then they could have done that without actually passing on the actual spreadsheet. You could take a screenshot of it, and black out any personal details.

Again this is really really bad judgment and reflects very poorly on those involved.