Francesca Rudkin: We might not be surprised by Nash's actions, but should we accept them?

Well, it kind of feels like the inevitable has happened, hasn't it?

After receiving his final final warning a few weeks back, it wasn't going to take much for Stuart Nash to lose his portfolios and job as a Minister.

Especially, as many thought Prime Minister Chris Hipkins's actions over his previous cabinet manual discretions were not firm enough.

So, this time around it has been revealed that Stuart Nash sent an e-mail to two of his donors, revealing confidential information from cabinet discussions that was of interest to them.

Details about where several ministers stood on the issue of a commercial rent relief package for Covid hit businesses was passed on which once again contravenes the Cabinet manual, which states discussions at Cabinet and Cabinet Committee meetings as informal and confidential.

As you’d expect it to be.

Members of cabinet are bound by collective responsibility and must not detail who took what position on an issue.

So clearly the Prime Minister had no choice but to fire Nash and it was good to see that there was only two hours between the e-mail being revealed and the Prime Minister announcing his sacking from Cabinet.

Inexcusable is how the Prime Minister described Nash's actions. Nash crossed a line that is totally unacceptable to the Prime Minister. Well, now we know where the line is. Maybe you felt the line had been crossed before.  

Look, I'm not hugely surprised, and I doubt you are either, about Nash's actions.

I'm sure Nash is not the only Minister in any Government to have had a conversation with an interested party about policy.

Maybe just giving them a bit of a heads up about which way the Government is swaying, although I don't think they're all silly enough to record it in writing, in an e-mail.

But we know that Ministers and their departments are lobbied by various different groups all the time.

Lobbyists, academics and researchers, business organisations, federations, charities, community and activism groups, depending on how closely aligned and values, I'm sure they have been given the occasional heads up in the past as well, but when we're presented with the evidence so bluntly, it does make you wonder whether the Prime Minister has his Ministers under control.

Are they acting with due propriety? Like me, you might not be surprised by Nash’s actions, but should we be accepting it? And the answer is no, we shouldn't by any Minister.  

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