This Substack has its genesis a decade ago. From 2015 to 2017, Fonterra deliberately cooked its financial books in order to hide bad investments and artificially inflate its net worth and share price. These shifty shenanigans, in which Fonterra’s auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers were complicit, meant that dairy farmers who purchased their mandatory Fonterra shares over this period did so at inflated prices. More particularly, the book cooking significantly boosted the already astronomical pay of Dutch Fonterra CEO Theo Spierings, whose bonuses were significantly based on Fonterra’s share price,.
Curious to know why New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority (FMA) failed to act on complaints it received about Fonterra’s fiscal falsifications, on 25 May 2023 I made a request to FMA, under New Zealand’s Official Information Act (OIA). I requested FMA’s internal reports on the basis of which FMA decided to take no action on those complaints. FMA rejected my requests, on trumped up and bogus grounds that:
AN AWFULLY TRICKY TRIUMVIRATE
John McLean
·
24 August 2023
Fonterra is New Zealand’s behemoth dairy cooperative.
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In August 2023, I complained to the appropriate body about FMA’s truculent refusal to comply with the OIA, that body being the Office of the Government Ombudsman. For two years, the Ombudsman did absolutely nothing with my complaint. Finally, on 4 June 2025 (almost two years later), I received this email from the Ombudsman:
- my requested information “is subject to an obligation of confidence and release would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information from market participants in future”; and
- release of my requested information would “likely prejudice maintenance of the law” and “prejudice the natural justice rights of Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited as well as Fonterra’s auditors PwC”.
AN AWFULLY TRICKY TRIUMVIRATE
John McLean
·
24 August 2023
Fonterra is New Zealand’s behemoth dairy cooperative.
Read full story
In August 2023, I complained to the appropriate body about FMA’s truculent refusal to comply with the OIA, that body being the Office of the Government Ombudsman. For two years, the Ombudsman did absolutely nothing with my complaint. Finally, on 4 June 2025 (almost two years later), I received this email from the Ombudsman:
Click to view
And then, on 22 August 2025, I received this response from FMA:
Click to view
The discerning reader will note that, while FMA has provided me with some original documentation as to why it took no action against Fonterra, it has still limited what it has provided, on grounds that I consider to be spurious.
We’re not playing Tiddlywinks here. Deliberate non-compliance with the OIA is a direct subversion of, and assault on, a transparent society. But regrettably, the current public service is treating the OIA as a joke, and responding to OIA requests as if doing so is a loaded game. But this is not a joke or a game. There’s a war being fought for New Zealand to be a truly transparent society and nation – because it’s far from that at the moment.
Arraigned on the side of public service transparency and an open and democratic New Zealand nation are independent media (including marginal plodders like me) and engaged and motivated citizens.
The OIA does not currently contain punitive sanctions against agencies or officials who fail to comply. The Government Ombudsman can investigate complaints and make recommendations, but cannot penalise non-compliance.
Recently anointed Chief Ombudsman John Allen has explicitly opposed the idea of introducing penalties for OIA non-compliance and expressed his mental, mystical belief that the “mana” (authority and respect) of the Ombudsman’s office is sufficient to inculcate compliance, and that introducing penalties could – and I kid you not - undermine the current system. John Allen’s conception of his role as Ombudsman is even more insipid than that of his predecessor, Peter Bouchier, who are least at the end of his tenure belatedly advocated for OIA non-compliance penalties. My views on the current Government Ombudsman remain unchanged:
PUBLIC “SERVICE” ZOMBIE APOCALYSPE
John McLean
·
7 Jun
New Zealand’s Official Information Act (OIA) produces precious little good. The OIA is not fundamentally flawed, but OIA requests are routinely and unlawfully declined, delayed and redacted. The Blob Club hides in the dark and covers for itself.
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Laws without sanctions are no laws at all, especially when it comes to laws governing public transparency. Obstruction and opacity are the Blob’s default settings and the public service ethic is dying, if it’s not already dead. John Allen is a “mana” vacuum, and even if he had charisma and commanded any sort of respect, he wouldn’t command it from the skulking ideologues who populate the senior ranks of New Zealand’s public service.
The ousted two-term Labour Government’s claim to be “the most transparent government ever” was pure gaslighting. Ardern and her crew never intended their Government and administration to be transparent, because transparency was an anathema to their dictatorial, didactic conception of Government.
Ardern’s impenetrability continues to infect all government agencies and the jury is out on where the current National/NZ First/ACT coalition Government stands on all this. As of now, New Zealand’s current administration does not appear to be contemplating introducing sanctions or penalties for non-compliance with the OIA.
Other Western countries, including the USA, UK, Canada and Australia, have sanctions for non-compliance with their freedom of information laws and it would be a simple legislative process to give the OIA some teeth. National Party MP Paul Goldsmith is the person, as Minister of Justice responsible for the OIA, who could quickly insert appropriate penalties into the OIA.
Lift more than a finger, Mr GoldMinister! If New Zealand is to emerge from its funk, it needs powerful, symbolic changes. Penalizing non-compliance with its public transparency laws would be send a powerful message to the Bureaucrats of Blobtearoa that they need to stop hiding and start truly serving New Zealanders and the once-plucky nation they inhabit.
If the Government is not willing to penalize non-compliance with the OIA, then Ministers should warn all Heads of Government Departments and other agencies that deliberate OIA non-compliance will not be tolerated. The Government should issue an edict to each such Head, in no uncertain terms, that the first instance of willful non-compliance will result in a final warning for the Head, and any further non-compliance see the Head roll. There’s too much at stake here not to see Heads on stakes. As the Aussies would say, these people are taking the piss. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has shown what can be done by guillotining the Governor and Chair of the Reserve Bank. And the Reserve Bank has more statutory distance from Government than other Government agencies.
We mustn’t for a moment buy into the constant refrain from the public service that OIA contraventions result from lack of resources or staff training. With the right will and ethic, it’s quick and easy to comply with the OIA. Government agencies are gobbling up far more of their own time and resources deliberately not complying with the OIA.
Having done nothing for two years to investigate FMA’s non-compliance with the OIA, the Office of the Ombudsman gave me 3 days to object to its proposed abandonment of its (non-) investigation of my original complaint. In the interests of transparency, here’s the Ombudsman Office’s email.
Click to view
This is not “mana”. It’s manure.
The chief executive of the FMA over the period during which FMA took no action against Fonterra was Rob Everett. Everett is from Britain, as is former Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt. It’s odd and sad that New Zealand imports people to supervise our financial markets and human rights from BRITAIN…a union of countries now disintegrating under the weight of fiscal mismanagement and human rights laws that have seen brilliant script writer Graham Linehan arrested by five armed British police for a few mild gender critical tweets.
The scant attention that the FMA gave to Fonterra’s financial fiddling ended with a whimper. In response to a memo recommending that the FMA take no action and not comment publicly on Fonterra’s crap conduct, FMA’s Director of Capital Markets Sarah Vrede sent this email (the “Rob” is FMA CEO Rob Everett)…and that was that.
Click to view
Despite the FMA’s reasons for limiting the information provided in response to my OIA request being in my view unlawful, I’ll probably give up on this. In the polluted waters of New Zealand’s polity, there’s no shortage of other fish to fry and sh*t to shine a light on.
John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced.
1 comment:
John, highly interesting. Slightly off topic, imo if these govt officials did release everything requested it probably would not do Arderns battered reputation any good at all. I have no doubt that the left leaning govt officials are still running the ship. This govt needs to make it a crime to do so.
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