Simply not credible

RNZ has more information this morning on Phillip Morris Minister Casey Costello's mysterious tobacco policy document, and it just gets worse and worse. Costello has consistently claimed to have no idea who authored the document; now she's saying she has no idea how it even got into her office:

A politically charged document arguing for tobacco tax cuts was sent to health officials by a NZ First minister - even though she says she has no idea who wrote it or how it ended up in her office.

[...]

Costello now acknowledges the document existed but says she does not know who wrote it - only that the author does not work in her office.

"The document you have referred to was not generated or collated by any members of my office and was only received as a hard copy on December 6," she wrote in response to RNZ's OIA request.

She said she still did not know who wrote the document or even who gave it to her.

I have more information about this from an Ombudsman's complaint, where she has told the Ombudsman that:

the document was not generated or collated by any members of my office’, ‘a hard copy of the document had been placed on my desk and…I did not receive the document through any other correspondence’ and that she has ‘confirmed with all members of my office that none of them placed the notes on my desk’

The Minister also advised that she ‘enquired with staff in my office about whether they knew who had authored the document and they advised that they did not’.

The Ombudsman is satisfied that this is a reasonable effort required to justify refusing a request for authorship, and on face value, it is. The problem is that even if we believe her, her explanation is simply not credible. Essentially she's saying that some unknown person - a ninja, perhaps? - walked into her office, put something on her desk without anyone noticing, and that despite supposedly not knowing where this document came from, it became government policy. Which is... not how government is meant to operate in a democracy, and raises serious doubts about whether she is fit to be a minister. It also raises serious doubts about both the level of security on ministerial offices, and the quality of the ministers that they're such credulous fools to advance any crackpot idea placed on their desk (OTOH, it does suggest a way of altering government policy for the better, if only we had some better ninjas with better documents to feed them...)

The other problem is that we have no reason to believe her. Quite apart from the sheer incredulity of her story, this is a Minister who has acted in a systematically dishonest way over this document, down to lying over its existence (she's also lied over what advice she considered, and withheld evidence from the Ombudsman). We have no reason to treat her statements as honest this time. But I suppose that if she is shown to have lied, that would be a crime, and you'd hope that the Ombudsman would be sick enough of her bullshit to actually refer her to police this time.