Three National Party Ministers of the Crown are now embroiled in a cybersecurity breach involving them inappropriately using private e-mail addresses to handle Government files. Minister of Education Erica Stanford, Minister of Housing Christopher Bishop and Minister of Finance Nicola Willis, have all been implicated in the misuse of private e-mail to handle Government files.
The scandal, which has echoes of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s misuse of an e-mail server set up in her name, has thus far failed to draw much reaction from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who states that he is very relaxed about the admissions. Mrs Clinton was never found to have committed a criminal act by the F.B.I. However it was clear that she committed extremely careless acts, in not using her private e-mail server to handle Government files, despite having a United States Government e-mail account with the cyber security one would expect of the state apparatus, during her four years as Secretary of State under Former President Barak Obama.
The consequences for Mrs Clinton were significant. When the F.B.I. reopened the case against her, it was just 11 days before the 2016 Presidential Election. She would go on to lose to current President Donald Trump. Some might argue that that alone is punishment enough not becoming the first elected female President of the United States.
The gravity of their offending in our case for Ms Stanford, Mr Bishop and Mrs Willis probably won’t meet the threshold for a criminal investigation. However as seen below, there might be a case for them being dismissed from their portfolio’s or some kind of formal Parliamentary censure. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he was very relaxed about the situtation.
In terms of Ministerial responsibility, one might be able to argue that the Ministers in question are in breach of Cabinet Manual Section 2.56, which pertains to the conduct of Ministers of the Crown. Where a personal e-mail account or phone number is used, it needs to be captured for the record according to Cabinet Manual Section 2.87, whilst Cabinet Manual Section 8.109 states that “records” for purposes of the Public Records Act 2005 include digital and physical records held on devices including personal communication devices.
As this is in its early days yet, it remains to be seen how Parliament will react. Opposition Leader Christopher Hipkins says that it is unacceptable. Labour Education spokeswoman Willow Jean Prime cast doubt on how much has been told to Mr Luxon.
I think there might be more to come, even if it turns out that there are genuine transmission issues with sending/receiving and printing files.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 