Her parents carried on as if nothing had happened. She gave up.
If only people were brave enough to do that with the United States president.
There is something unnerving about a 79-year-old orange apparition, obsessed with his own importance, throwing a tanty, especially when he is surrounded by other fawning fops, some of whom share his peculiar hue.
While I have yet to turn orange, dealing with agencies who still cannot comply with the basics of the Official Information Act (OIA), 43 years on from its introduction, brings out the hissy fit in me.
Yes, these agencies might get myriad requests. They might have inexperienced and insufficient staff.
They might not see providing information as soon as practicable as something which is valued by their superiors. Who knows?
But what I do know is that the constant battles journalists and others have to get official information is unacceptable and tedious.
Despite the recently retired Ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier delivering a scathing analysis of Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora’s (HNZ) failings with regard to the OIA in March, I am not alone in wondering if anything has changed.
There are still delays not handled according to the law, sometimes poor grasp of what constitutes official information, and responses which are inadequate.
At the beginning of September, after an investigation by the Ombudsman, the agency had to formally apologise for its unreasonable handling of a request from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) for data on under-staffed shifts.
Although the organisation had received similar information without issue previously, a year-long battle ensued.
In its apology letter to the NZNO, HNZ says the organisation is proactively strengthening its processes to ensure it meets its OIA obligations, particularly in relation to timeliness and the clear communication of decisions on requests.
A recent interaction with HNZ seeking information in July about nurses’ pay makes me question that.
I expected HNZ to readily answer questions on this, particularly when politicians have been bandying about figures on the average salary of registered nurses, including overtime and allowances, since March — more than $125,000 or $127,000, depending on the politician.
Nurses took issue with these figures.
Even with my 63% in School Cert maths (that figure would have been in the 30s if not for grading to fit the bell curve), I know that an average can be easily skewed by extreme figures at either end.
Accordingly, I asked for the median, the middle value in the data. It is $103,803, based on payroll data for 12 months ending May last year, but it took HNZ 39 days to come up with that figure (and answers to some other questions).
It should have provided a response or sought an extension after 20 working days.
In the eventual response HNZ apologised for the delay, telling me the time taken was not what it aspired to: ‘‘however, the high level of interest in this information means we have taken extra care in the analysis of the data’’.
This is an organisation in the midst of negotiating pay and conditions for nurses. It is hard to believe this information could not be quickly and accurately ascertained.
The letter went on to say the employees who originally provided the initial calculations pertaining to the $125,000 average salary figure were no longer with HNZ. This meant the calculations had to be extracted, analysed and re-validated before providing them.
Really? Does this not raise questions about HNZ’s management of information? Did whoever came up with the average number used by the politicians not have to produce something showing their workings, and was that not recorded somewhere?
When I finally got the response, HNZ referred to trying to get on top of its high number of requests.
It should not have been a surprise to anyone that following the abolition of district health boards in 2022 there would be an explosion of requests for information from the new national body.
The health boards were obliged to hold public meetings, which meant a considerable amount of information was regularly available.
HNZ has not proactively released similar information.
Boards also had staff which handled media and OIA inquiries. Their systems were not perfect either, but they were considerably better than what we have now.
So, when HNZ told me it appreciated my patience and understanding about its overdue response, I pettily pointed out I was not patient or particularly understanding, and sick of complaining to the Ombudsman.
At least I did not have the caps lock on.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
