Dear Prime Minister

This is an OIA request.

In a determination issued on Christmas Eve, the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) refers to a Professor and an Associate Professor from the University of Auckland being "asked by ... the Prime Minister’s Office to provide [public] commentary [on COVID-19], in their roles as employees of the [University of Auckland]".

See the determination at https://www.employment.govt.nz/assets/el... and in particular paragraph 18.

I take the ERA's use of "Prime Minister's Office" to mean your office situated primarily on the 9th floor of the Beehive and funded by Ministerial Services, and not the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet or your electorate office. My request applies to this narrow sense of "Prime Minister's Office", but does include you as part of "the Prime Minister's Office". It also excludes the time that one of the academics appeared at one of your media conferences via video link.

It seems to me to be at best uncommon for a Prime Minister or their Office staff to directly ask an employee of an independent Crown entity (or even a department) to provide public commentary on a contentious matter concerning government policy "in their roles as employees" of that entity, at least without making any such a request through the Chief Executive (in this case the Vice Chancellor of Dean).

I am sure you would agree that such a request coming from the Head of the Government or a staffer in the office of the Head of Government, which is the Crown entity's major funder, might place the employee of that Crown entity in a difficult and perhaps uncomfortable position where they would feel a sense of obligation to comply, even if this was not your or your staffer's intention. This is therefore a high public interest in establishing the nature of any such requests, if indeed they have ever occurred at all, and what policies or practices are followed with respect to such requests.

To facilitate this information becoming public, I make the following requests for information. Please respond to each request individually. That is, if there is a reason one request must be refused, please do not automatically extend this to the other requests.

1) Is there any formal or informal policy or generally understood position on whether you or your office staff should ever directly request an employee of an independent Crown entity such as a TEI (as opposed to a department) to provide public commentary in their roles as employees of that entity, rather than to make any such a request through the Chief Executive (in this case the Vice Chancellor)? If so, what is it?

2) Do you or your office staff recall ever directly requesting that the applicants in the determination referred to above provide public commentary on Covid-19 in their role as employees of the respondent?

3) Do you or your office staff recall ever directly requesting that the applicants in the determination referred to above provide public commentary on Covid-19 in any other role? If so, what was that role, if any?

4) If the answer to 2 and 3 is "yes", I make a further request for:

i) the criteria under which the applicants were chosen to be the experts approached to provide public commentary
ii) the dates (exactly or roughly) on which the requests were made
iii) any written documentation of the requests
iv) information on why the requests were made, and what sort of commentary was requested

5) Do you or your office staff recall ever directly requesting that anyone other than the applicants in the determination referred to above provide public commentary on Covid-19 in their role as employees of a Crown entity?

6) Do you or your office staff recall ever directly requesting that anyone other than the applicants in the determination referred to above provide public commentary on Covid-19 in any other role? If so, what was that role, if any?

7) If the answer to 5 and 6 is "yes", I make a further request for:

i) who was approached, and the criteria under which they were chosen to be asked to provide public commentary
ii) the dates (exactly or roughly) on which the requests were made
iii) any written documentation of the requests
iv) information on why the requests were made, and what sort of commentary was requested

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Please reply as soon as reasonably practicable, and in no case later than 20 working days after today's date.

Yours sincerely

Matthew Hooton