Kia ora

Acknowledging your request. By way of explanation, this will be a difficult request to respond and may require substantial collation and research. This is not because of the amount of material that is relevant to your request, but the actions the Ministry would need to undertake to find that material and the large amount of material it would need to search through. In our experience requests that ask for all information (such as this one) use significant time and resource.

In relation to your specific request and the emphasis on 'communications' is difficult to scope for a couple of reasons:

- Staff do not communicate in a uniform manner. Staff may have discussed the incident you refer to in a variety of ways. This could include "Te Papa", "protest", " Te Tiriti o Waitangi / The Treaty of Waitangi" or a combination of all these words. Many of these words and phrases are part of our day to day operations (for example, the Ministry monitors Te Papa as an Autonomous Crown Entity so there would be many emails about Te Papa that do not discuss the incident you refer to but would come up in an IT search. This would then require a manual review.).

- Anecdotally, there would be a large amount of administrative material within scope of your request (any example would be: discussions between the Ministry and the Offices asking about timeframes or deadlines for advice about the protest, or confirming receipt of any advice). The way that you have worded your request means that this would be captured, but would likely be of little value to understanding the issue. There would be no way that the Ministry could exclude this from its search process without manually reviewing it, which is a time consuming and labour intensive process.

- Finally, updates are often provided to Ministers in an omnibus fashion. That is, Ministerial offices may ask for advice on many matters and these are provided all at once. Advice is not necessarily titled in a way that means it can be found easily. This means that a wider search of advice provided to the Minister would need to be undertaken to ascertain whether it relates to your request or not.

It should also be noted that Te Papa (which is subject to the OIA in its own right) has proactively released documents and responses to OIA requests on its website in relation to the incident you refer to. These can be viewed here: https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/about/what-we...

With the above in mind, and noting that the request as it currently stands would require a lot of resource to locate and collate any relevant material could you please consider refining your request?

While you are under no obligation to do, if you can provide a bit more detail about what you are specifically looking for or the reasons for the request then we can provide you with advice about how to frame and structure your request.

We look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible to continue work on your request.

Ngā mihi

Te Pae Hāpai Minita | Ministerial Services
Manatū Taonga | Ministry for Culture & Heritage
Ki te puāwai te ahurea, Ka ora te iwi
Culture is thriving, The people are well
Public Trust Building, 131 Lambton Quay, Wellington
PO Box 5364, Wellington 6140 | Ph +64 4 499 4229

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Kia ora Tessa,

 

I refer to your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA),
which was clarified on 19 March 2024 to seek the following:

 

Email correspondence between the Minister’s Office and the Ministry
regarding the [‘Signs of a Nation’] Te Papa exhibition and the protest
activity relating to it between 9 December 2023 and 13 March 2024

 

The OIA requires that we advise you of our decision on your request no
later than 20 working days after the day we received your request.
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to meet that time limit and we are
therefore writing to notify you of an extension of the time to make our
decision.

 

This extension is necessary because consultations necessary to make a
decision on your request are such that a proper response cannot reasonably
be made within the original time limit.

 

You can expect to receive a response to your request by Monday 29 April
2024.

 

You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of
this decision. Information about how to make a complaint is available at
[1]www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or free phone 0800 802 602.

 

If you have any queries, please feel free to contact Ministerial Services
at [2][Ministry for Culture and Heritage request email].  If any additional factors come to light which are
relevant to your request, please do not hesitate to contact us so that
these can be considered.

Ngā mihi
Te Pae Hāpai Minita  |  Ministerial Services
Manatū Taonga | Ministry for Culture & Heritage
Ki te puāwai te ahurea, Ka ora te iwi
Culture is thriving, The people are well 
Public Trust Building, 131 Lambton Quay, Wellington
PO Box 5364, Wellington 6140 | Ph +64 4 499 4229

 

 

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Kia ora Tessa,

 

Please find attached our response to your Official Information Act request
of 13 March 2024.

 

Ngā mihi,

India
Te Pae Hāpai Minita  |  Ministerial Services
Manatū Taonga | Ministry for Culture & Heritage
Ki te puāwai te ahurea, Ka ora te iwi
Culture is thriving, The people are well 
Public Trust Building, 131 Lambton Quay, Wellington
PO Box 5364, Wellington 6140 | Ph +64 4 499 4229

 

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