Good news for transparency: former Minister Clare Curran is being forced to archive all the official information she had tried to hide in Gmail:
Former government minister Clare Curran has assured Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern she is archiving all emails she sent using her personal Gmail account.
Ms Curran resigned as a minister last week after being unable to answer questions about what official work she had carried out on her personal email.
[...]
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today work-related emails on Ms Curran's G-mail account would be saved as official records and be discoverable under the Official Information Act.
Ms Curran said she was working with the prime minister's office to archive the information.
"I've given the prime minister an assurance that I'm archiving all of my Gmails, and I'm working through all of that at the moment, and they will be publicly discoverable."
Of course, this means that we're trusting Curran to decide what was held in a Ministerial rather than personal capacity, which is an obvious conflict of interest which may also deprive the government of its records. It would be far safer if it was under the supervision of the Ombudsman's office. But sadly, they have no general jurisdiction over Ministers.
