MBIE conspires with spies

The State Services Commissioner has just appointed former Deputy SSC Doug Martin to investigate Southern Respones use of Thompson & Clark Investigations to spy on earthquake victims. Meanwhile, it emerges that despite being banned from hiring them, MBIE has an unhealthily cosy relationship with TCIL, and for some reason routinely gets sent intel on anti-mining groups and protests:

Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show a close relationship between Thompson and Clark and MBIE going back five years.

"When you read these emails, it's amazing how friendly it all is. 'Let's go for a beer. Let's go for a coffee.' There's discussion of skiing together," Mr Norman said.

In 2015, Thompson and Clark began supplying MBIE with weekly intelligence reports it was pulling together for the oil and gas industry on protest groups.

Thompson and Clark then started using MBIE to drum up more work with foreign oil and mining companies.

Which is guess was the payoff for all the work they were doing: being sent customers. But none of this is ethical,and it all falls well below the standards we expect from a government agency. The SSC inquiry will apparently have discretion on whether to include MBIE's use of TCIL in their terms of reference; hopefully they will. Otherwise, it will effectively be saying that the standards it seeks to apply to Southern Response don't apply to a core government department, which is simply nonsensical.