Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
In making changes that line up with tobacco industry lobbying, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello ought to be transparent. But she's not.
The heat has been on Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, virtually since the New Zealand First list MP took up the job at the end of last year.
She met a fiery reception from angry doctors at a Health Coalition Aotearoa conference this week, and the chief ombudsman has turned up the flames.
The issue: smoking.
Costello has been dealing with the outcry from health professionals after reversing Labour's smoke-free legislation, which had been lauded globally.
There was more anger as she proposed a three-year freeze on excise tax rises on tobacco. (This has not happened.)
But she did slash the excise tax on Heated Tobacco Products in half, and set aside a contingency fund of $216 million to cover the loss of government income from that. Tobacco companies had advocated for this change on the basis that HTPs are tools to help people stop smoking. However the Ministry of Health had advised the minister there was no evidence to support that.
Spouting another tobacco industry line - that nicotine is as harmful as caffeine - did not help Costello's cause.
She's been told off by Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier twice now, first reprimanded and ordered to apologise to RNZ and a public health researcher for refusing to release information under the Official Information Act.
Now, there's an investigation into a mystery document that she has passed to health officials to develop policy.
At first she said there wasn't any such document... then that she didn't know who'd written it, and it had just appeared on her desk.
That was not good enough for Boshier, who has taken the rare step of notifying the chief archivist about the record-keeping issues in this case. He wants to establish the provenance of the document.
"Look, she hasn't really helped herself in the transparency stakes," says RNZ investigative reporter Guyon Espiner.
He's been driving these stories, and outlining NZ First's connections to tobacco lobbyists. Unhappy people in the know have leaked him vital information, including the contents of the so-called mystery document. Costello will no longer agree to an interview with him.
In today's Detail podcast, Espiner explains why that document is so important.
"It has formed the basis of the development of a number of public policy positions. Casey Costello has said that this document arrived in her office on December 6 last year and that she doesn't know who wrote it... and she doesn't even know how it came to be on her desk. But she gave it to the Ministry of Health to enable them to help develop public policy around tobacco control.
"The contents of that document are pretty fascinating. We've got the full document because it was leaked to us. There's a redacted version that she was forced to give us so we've been able to compare the two.
"But it's a highly politically charged document. It talks about the Smokefree Generation stuff that Labour was trying to get through as 'nanny state nonsense'; that New Zealanders were being treated as guinea pigs; that no one else in the world has been stupid enough to do this; and also makes a very strong case for tax cuts for tobacco, which Casey Costello has eventually done.
"There are a lot of moves in there that she has pursued."
There are some obvious phrases in the document that echo lobbying lines from the tobacco industry.
Two former senior NZ First staffers - David Broome and Apirana Dawson - hold very senior corporate communications positions at cigarette giant Philip Morris.
Drawing the lines between the lobbyists and the politician is very hard to prove.
"But when you lay out the facts... they are the facts," says Espiner. "Which is part of the reason that it's been driving me to keep on turning the stones on this."
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