Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying outright to both the public and to Ministers. But National doesn't believe in transparency or oversight of those in power, and seems to think that NZDF can be trusted not to commit war crimes (or just kill people through sheer incompetence), so they wanted to get rid of it. Fortunately, NZ First said "no". So I guess we have something to thank Winston for after all.
But the article does make it clear that despite supposedly having accepted the findings of the Inquiry, NZDF is still implacably opposed to any independent oversight of its actions, and is fighting it tooth-and-nail through the bureaucracy:
A separate briefing to Collins shortly after she took office last December shows defence officials expressing concern about the “additional direct and indirect costs and personnel overheads” associated with the inspectorate’s creation.Oh no. Outside scrutiny might cost more. Except those costs are a pittance compared to the cost of another NZDF fuckup. And it turns out that NZDF has endless money to spend on mushrooming inquiries - which is perhaps the real cost they're worried about. And it does suggest an interesting OIA in a few years time: how many staff does NZDF have assigned to dealing with the IGD, and how many times bigger is that number than the IGD's entire staff.“It is anticipated that the five-person office … will impose a significant work demand within the Office of the Chief of Defence Force and the wider NZDF for handling requests for information, coordinating [inspectorate-]initiated investigations and reviews, facilitating Base, Camp and Operational (domestic and international) visits and managing related service and support functions,” the briefing said.
