Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

Could you please provide the following information.
It largely relates to how the government is spending money, and its actions in relation to public relations and information handling - which should be transparent processes.

1. Re: Press support employed by the office of the Prime Minister
and Cabinet

i. How many full time people or agencies have been employed by the NZ
government to liaise with the press or deal with the press in any
way (either social media or main stream media or any other form of
media), or who have supported such operations - on a yearly basis
for the past 5 years? If agencies, who are they?

i.a. How much has been paid on salaries or fees per year for this over the
past 5 years?

ii. How much has been paid per year for salaries or fees for part time
press support for each year over the past 10 years?

iii. Please provide the numbers of people who do the above on a
contracted basis, including:

a. their names, and
b. the amount paid to the top 5 press contractors per year on a
yearly basis for the past 5 years and
c. the total amount paid to such contractors for each of the past
5 years

iv. How much has been paid overall for press activities (including
salaries as well as money paid for various public relation and
press type services) for each of the last 5 years?

2. Re: Senior Press support employed by the NZ Prime Minister and
Cabinet

Please provide each of the following:
i. the names,
ii. roles,
iii. salaries and
iv. bonuses
of the senior press support persons or agencies employed by the NZ Prime
Minister and Cabinet for each of the last 5 years.

3. How much money was paid per year for each of the past 5 years
by the NZ government for any reason to the following papers
(including their online version) to each of the following by the NZ
government?
i. The New Zealand Herald
ii. stuff.co.nz
iii. The Spinoff
iv. The Otago Daily Times
v. Herald on Sunday

4. How much money was paid per year for each of the past 5 years
by the NZ government for any reason to TV stations? (Please list by
TV station and amount.)

5. How much money was paid per year for each of the past 5 years
by the NZ government for any reason to radio stations? (Please list
by radio station and amount.)

6. How much money was paid per year for each of the past 5 years
by the NZ government for any reason to bloggers and influencers? (Please list by
blog name [and owner] and the amount.)5

7. Re: Social media management
i. How much money per year for each of the past 5 years has been
spent on social media management?

ii. What did social media management consist of?

iii. What were the top 5 social media sites with which the
government Press support liaised with?

iv. Who were the liaisons

v. Please provide communications related to Covid-19 and 'misinformation' between the liaisons and the platforms.

Yours faithfully,

Jai Ganesh