Northland bridges – OIA scandal (2 of 3)
Overnight, I have received Simon Bridges’ version of events in relation to his abuse of public officials over the Northland bridge bribe.
Hilariously, he claims that the trail of increasingly panicked emails from NZTA officials about the costs of upgrading single lane bridges in Northland had nothing at all to do with National’s promise one working day later to upgrade several single lane bridges in Northland. I’m serious. That’s his actual story. From his OIA response to me:
I did not seek any advice from the Ministry of Transport or the New Zealand Transport Authority on the commitment to upgrade 10 single-lane bridges in the Northland region.
However, general information concerning single-lane bridges in Northland was received over a period of time.
This response is Pythoneqsue in its absurdity. If you believe his version of events, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you. (Geddit? Bridge. I’m here all week.)
It is especially absurd when you also consider the NZTA’s response to the same OIA request:
The NZ Transport Agency was not asked to provide advice to the Minister of Transport about whether to proceed with upgrading the Northland bridges but it did provide the attached information to help inform that decision.
Well of course National didn’t want advice on whether to make the announcement, because they already knew it was a dumb idea. But NZTA officials knew precisely that they were being tasked with work to support an election campaign promise. I wonder who gave them that impression…
What this OIA response shows is that Simon Bridges, like Bill English, knew it was entirely inappropriate to force public officials to work on a party’s by-election promises. But in his desperation he did it anyway, across three separate interactions with the NZTA.
Now he’s trying – with comically little success – to cover his tracks.
This is really serious for Simon Bridges. There’s a paper trail of him misusing public resources, and a further paper trail showing multiple Ministers knew – at the time – that what he was doing was wrong.