Dr Bryce Edwards: Integrity Briefing: Why Erica Stanford’s Gmail use matters

It’s very difficult to hold power to account when they don’t keep proper records of what they are doing. That’s the essence of the problem when Cabinet Ministers like Erica Stanford “go off the grid” and use private communications channels like Gmail for their official government business. Whether intentionally or not, such politicians create “accountability holes” that prevent them from being fully scrutinised. Such sidestepping of the rules, which hides government activity from the public, is dangerous for democracy.

The Erica Stanford scandal was broadcast in a story on 1News last night, with political editor Maiki Sherman explaining that the Minister had used her personal Gmail account for dozens of ministerial communications that should have occurred on official ministerial or parliamentary email accounts. Her Gmail escapades were not a one-off occurrence but a pattern that cuts across her portfolios – see Tom Day’s article, Erica Stanford sent pre-Budget documents to her personal email

I went on TVNZ Breakfast this morning to talk about it. I explained that this isn’t just a security issue but one of public trust, transparency and integrity. I argued that there needed to be four responses to the revelation about Stanford:

1. An inquiry by either the office of either the Ombudsman or the Auditor General

2.The Prime Minister should require all ministers to declare what communication platforms they have on their various devices

3. Modernisation of the Cabinet Manual, and

4.Formal training for all Ministers and their staff about the proper use of communications platforms.

But why does Gmailgate matter?

Chris Bishop has complained today that people “need to keep a bit of perspective on things” and “I don’t think it’s the biggest sin in the world”. It’s undoubtedly true that the Stanford saga might seem unimportant, abstract, or even pedantic. However, what has been occurring shouldn’t just be viewed as an eccentric tech habit or a trivial breach of protocol. It strikes at the heart of government ethics and open democracy. New Zealand prides itself on the idea that it is one of the world’s most transparent and least corrupt countries, but this incident provides further evidence that those in power can often do whatever they want – only occasionally taken to task when some good journalism catches wayward politicians out.

The fact is that ministers are expected to conduct public business through secure, official channels that preserve records and enable oversight. When a Minister “goes off the grid” by shifting official communications into a private inbox, it raises red flags for democratic integrity and transparency.

Rules exist for a reason: to prevent precisely this sort of backchannel governance that can evade scrutiny. By using a personal email for official business, Stanford created a potential accountability hole – a gap in the record where crucial discussions and decisions might escape the eyes of Parliament, the public, and history. This undermines those laws designed to keep government honest.

They also pose ethical dilemmas: is the Minister putting personal convenience above the public’s right to know? Is sensitive information being kept off the books deliberately to dodge scrutiny? Even if there’s no ill intent, the appearance of sidestepping transparency can be just as damaging to public trust.

Transparency and accountability

When ministers conduct business outside official systems, they threaten the principle of open government. New Zealand’s Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) gives the public and media the right to request government information to find out what officials are up to. Similarly, the Public Records Act 2005 (PRA) requires that important official records be preserved for the public archive.

In theory, a minister’s Gmail messages about government matters should be handed over for OIA and archived under the PRA just like any departmental memo. But theory often clashes with practice. How do we know what’s in a minister’s personal account?

We rely almost entirely on the Minister’s honesty to declare and forward those communications. Unlike official email systems – which are proactively managed by public servants, with copies accessible to aides and advisors who process information requests – a private inbox is a black box. Staffers cannot usually search it for OIA responses; only the Minister controls it. There are currently no robust enforcement mechanisms to ensure all work emails on private accounts are copied to official records. This creates a loophole: a minister could (intentionally or inadvertently) hide communications from scrutiny by simply keeping them personal.

As former Opposition open government spokesman Nick Smith warned during a past controversy over Clare Curran using Gmail for official government business, it “completely defeats the Official Information Act if the discretion is solely with the minister… to determine what’s on their private email address that is official”. In other words, if ministers get to play gatekeeper of their own Gmail, our transparency laws are effectively toothless. These accountability holes mean some conversations that should be on the public record might never see daylight, undermining the machinery of democratic checks and balances.

What the Cabinet Manual says

It turns out the Cabinet Manual – the official rulebook for ministers – explicitly forbids what Stanford was doing (barring truly exceptional cases). The latest 2023 update of the Cabinet Manual added a clear directive: “As far as possible, Ministers should not use their personal email account or phone number to conduct ministerial business.” If a Minister absolutely must use a private channel – say, they’re traveling and can’t access official systems – then strict conditions apply.

Minister Stanford’s Gmail use appears to flout these rules. Far from a one-off unavoidable scenario, she systematically used her private account for various ministerial purposes over many months. That runs directly counter to the “as far as possible, don’t do it” principle. It also seems her office did not have ready access to all those emails until she later forwarded some.

In fact, Parliamentary IT systems flagged her as a “suspect sender” precisely because she was acting from outside the government domain. If information is sitting in her Gmail until she chooses to forward it, one has to ask: were OIA responses always accounting for those emails?

The Minister claims that many emails to her personal address “have previously been considered in scope” of OIA requests and released. That’s a tacit admission that official information was indeed held in her private account – and only made public because someone specifically asked and she (or her staff) knew to retrieve it.

But what about the ones no one asks for? Or internal communications not requested under OIA? There is no indication that every Gmail message was proactively copied to official archives at the time. That is exactly the accountability gap the Cabinet Manual warns against.

In the Clare Curran saga of 2018, where a minister infamously used a Gmail account and failed to log a key meeting, the emails were eventually recovered and placed into the archives, but not without a political firestorm. At that time, even the Speaker of the House intervened to insist on seeing those private emails (held by Archives NZ) due to high public interest. It was an embarrassing episode that contributed to Curran’s resignation. Fast forward to 2025: one would think ministers had learned that lesson well.

Accountability holes and democratic checks

What are the broader implications when ministers discuss public matters in channels not readily accessible to the state? It creates blind spots for everyone whose job is to hold the government accountable – from Opposition MPs and journalists to watchdog agencies and citizens. New Zealand’s democratic system relies on certain checks and balances: robust record-keeping, transparency laws like the OIA, and practices that assume good faith disclosure. When those fail, oversight falters. Imagine a critical policy decision made via a back-and-forth on a minister’s Gmail or WhatsApp, which is then not captured in the official record. Later, when a parliamentary committee or Royal Commission tries to reconstruct “who knew what, when,” they might find a black hole. The public might never learn of influences or considerations that shaped the decision. This is not hypothetical – such scenarios have played out overseas, offering cautionary tales for New Zealand.

In the United Kingdom, the Covid-19 pandemic response was later scrutinised by an inquiry that found ministers had conducted extensive government business over WhatsApp messages. Informal WhatsApp group chats, often on personal phones, were used to debate lockdown policies and multimillion-pound contracts. Many of these messages only became public because of a leak, not because they were willingly archived.

Across the Atlantic, the infamous Hillary Clinton email affair in the United States underscores how using personal email for official work can explode into a major crisis. Clinton, as US Secretary of State, exclusively used a private email server for all her official correspondence. When this came to light, it triggered an FBI investigation and multiple lawsuits. Even more extreme, consider the Trump Administration in the US, where several officials took to using encrypted messaging apps that automatically delete messages – explicitly to keep their communications out of reach.

The lesson for New Zealand is clear: even absent malicious intent, private communications channels create a perception (and sometimes the reality) of avoidance – avoiding records laws, avoiding open scrutiny. It became a huge political liability for Clinton, and it would be naïve to think New Zealand politicians are somehow immune to similar fallout if they don’t take transparency seriously.

The Prime Minister’s troubling response

Perhaps most disturbing in the Stanford saga has been the response from the top. Prime Minister Chris Luxon downplayed the breach of protocol, saying he was “very relaxed” about Stanford’s use of Gmail. In his view, she only did it on a “few occasions” to deal with tech issues like printing, and besides, previous ministers had done the same thing. In fact, Luxon went so far as to say he was “super relaxed” since Stanford had since gotten IT support and “made the changes that she needed to make”.

This nonchalant stance is troubling. A leader’s tone at the top sets the standard for integrity in government. By brushing off a clear deviation from the rules as no big deal, the Prime Minister signals a casual disregard for the spirit of those rules. It suggests that convenience comes before compliance, and that ministers need not worry about consequences if they cut corners on open-government principles – as long as they patch it up later.

Most concerning is the signal this sends about integrity systems. New Zealand’s Cabinet Manual and related laws form an integrity system intended to ensure propriety, fairness, and openness in governance. When the country’s leader responds to a breach by saying he’s “comfortable” with it, it undermines the credibility of those rules.

Imagine any other workplace: if a CEO was “relaxed” about a senior executive bending data retention or compliance policies, what message would that send to the rest of the staff? Likely, that the policies are optional. In government, the stakes are even higher. Luxon’s response risks normalising behaviour that should be strongly discouraged.

Four reforms to close the gaps

Here’s what needs to be done:

1) Launch an Independent Inquiry: An independent investigation should be conducted into the use of private communication channels by ministers – not only Erica Stanford, but across the current Cabinet (and even recent past administrations for comparison). This inquiry (perhaps by the Ombudsman or Auditor-General) can establish the scope of the problem: How widespread is private email or messaging use for official business? What types of information have been shared that way? Crucially, it can assess whether any official information was withheld from the public record as a result. Only with facts on the table can we address the risks. Such an inquiry signals that the government takes the issue seriously, not as a partisan attack on one Minister, but as a systemic matter to fix in the interest of open government.

2) Full Disclosure of Communication Channels: The Prime Minister should require all ministers to urgently declare what communication platforms they use for official matters and to certify whether those practices comply with the Cabinet Manual, the OIA, and the Public Records Act. Are ministers exclusively using their @ministerial.govt.nz addresses? Do they use personal emails, WhatsApp, Signal, private phones, or other channels for any government business? The public deserves to know. This shouldn’t wait for an OIA request or scandal – it should be proactively disclosed as a show of good faith.

3) Modernise the Cabinet Manual: While the Cabinet Manual was updated in 2023 to include a section discouraging personal email use, the world of communications tech evolves rapidly. The manual should be further modernised to address contemporary technology explicitly – including messaging apps, social media DMs, cloud drives, and future tech like collaboration tools. It should lay out, in detail, protocols for these tools. For example, if WhatsApp must occasionally be used, the manual might require that chat transcripts be exported and filed by the Minister’s office. It should also clarify consequences for non-compliance: currently the manual is policy, but perhaps it needs more teeth (even if just political consequences).

4) Mandatory Training on Information Governance: Being an expert in education or health policy doesn’t automatically make someone an expert in record-keeping obligations. New ministers (and their staff) should undergo formal training on their duties under the OIA, Public Records Act, and Cabinet Manual regarding information management. This training should cover real scenarios. If such training already existed, it clearly didn’t stick in Stanford’s case; so it must be made routine and perhaps required annually.

New Zealanders expect and deserve a government that doesn’t play hide-and-seek with information. This latest saga is reminiscent of when Shane Jones was discovered last year to have left all details of ministerial meetings with mining company bosses out of his ministerial diary. As with that, floating of the rules by National ministers should be condemned and taken seriously.

It’s time to close the accountability holes, strengthen our integrity rules, and reaffirm that in New Zealand, open government is the only way government operates. Anything less is simply unacceptable, and ultimately undemocratic.

Dr Bryce Edwards is a politics lecturer at Victoria University and director of Critical Politics, a project focused on researching New Zealand politics and society. This article was first published HERE