The supplier, NEC, has done the same biometric immigration job for other Western nations, including US, Japan, Singapore. All that was required was for Immigration NZ to work with NEC to adapt NEC’s overseas solutions to the minimum extent required to “fit” New Zealand’s laws and existing systems. The legitimate question to be asked is whether Immigration NZ was ever committed to completing the project, or just wanted tens of millions of taxpayer money for a go-nowhere IT sheltered workshop.
Unfortunately, Stanford’s anger will probably go nowhere. For one good and simple reason. Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche has promised to “investigate” what’s happened. I’ve previously covered Roche’s nothing-to-see-here inquiry into the murky, criminal goings on at the Manurewa Marae on election day 2023, including the wilful blindness to John Tamihere cajoling his minions to grab others’ voting papers and vote them for the Maori Party.
THE COCK ROCHE AND THE HERON
John McLean 27 February 2025
Unfortunately, Stanford’s anger will probably go nowhere. For one good and simple reason. Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche has promised to “investigate” what’s happened. I’ve previously covered Roche’s nothing-to-see-here inquiry into the murky, criminal goings on at the Manurewa Marae on election day 2023, including the wilful blindness to John Tamihere cajoling his minions to grab others’ voting papers and vote them for the Maori Party.
THE COCK ROCHE AND THE HERON
John McLean 27 February 2025
The Public Service Commission has at last released its report on the abuse of New Zealanders’ personal information in connection with Auckland’s Manurewa Marae and the 2023 general election.
Read full story
Stanford’s chagrin followed publication of a report reviewing Immigration NZ’s nefarious conduct relating to its biometric capability project. The report is replete with management consultancy speak but nevertheless contains some juicy titbits and insights (while partly blaming…COVID?!). It’s author is named as Greg James, who’s credentials are redacted from the publicly available version (“Privacy of natural persons”) along with much other content (“Commercial information, Negotiations”). I’ve read the report, so you don’t have to.
MBIE received the report on 1 April 2026, April Fools’ Day, but did not provide it to Stanford until 12 June. Treating New Zealand’s general public and politicians as fools, newly-minted MBIE CEO Nick Blakeley told Stanford that the delay in providing the report to Stanford was due to a “wrong call” by officials who – Blakeley claimed – had decided to provide a response, alongside the report. To which Stanford sardonically responded, “In that preceding two months, there was no response provided.”
Stanford is being bullsh*tted on an industrial scale, and she knows it. Blakeley is just another feckless career mandarin who spends too much time on his hair.
Heather du Plessis-Allan interviewed Roche on 17 June.
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audio/sir-brian-roche-public-service-commissioner-calls-for-investigation-into-mbie-border-biometrics-project/
Roche claimed in the interview that he doesn’t think any of the culpable individuals are still employed in the public service. How could he possibly know that? (Clue: he doesn’t) The Public Service Commissioner then blames MBIE’s delay in providing the mythical response to Stanford on the “fuel crisis”. He proceeds to assert, contrary to all the anecdotal and empirical evidence, that the INZ biometric debacle is unique in the public service. The gnomish Knight concludes by claiming that Carolyn Tremain, MBIE’s CEO from 2017 to September 2025 (covering the entire relevant period of the Biometric Basket Case), wasn’t “involved” (which she transparently was) and is delighted to disclose that Carolyn has texted him and wants to be involved in Roche’s pretend investigation.
Well before Brian Roche roped his friend Carolyn in for her “help”, Treacherous Tremain had already started whitewashing…
An application to Minister Stanford for extra funding in March 2024 stated completely incorrectly:
“The project has undertaken three Independent Quality Assurance (IQA) reviews, the last one being in September 2023. The latest IQA confirmed the project approach was sound and robust, the build is achievable, and the risk management practice is effective.”
Questioned about the manifest rubbish being spouted, Tremain wrote to Stanford in April 2024:
“I have not found any evidence of a deliberate intention to mislead. On the contrary, the statement that the IQAs had “confirmed” the project approach was sound comes from a relatively junior staff member and this was not picked up in subsequent reviews.”
Exact how, pray tell Carolyn, can an application for funding containing clear concocted lies, and viewed by multiple eyes, not evidence a “deliberate intention to mislead”?
Winton Peters, in stark contrast, is not beating around in the bush. He’s said publicly that he’s in no doubt that Immigration NZ people deliberately misled the Government and demanded, for good measure, that the fibbers be jailed.
If anyone is to be imprisoned, the first for the clink should be English-born buffoon and recently retired head of Immigration NZ, Alison McDonald. In March 2026, Mendacious McDonald and current MBEI CEO Bulls**ting Nick Blakeley appeared in person before Government Select Committee. Both brazenly failed to disclose that the whole project had in fact been axed in November 2025. Lies by omission. Check this out.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/616552/immigration-new-zealand-head-didn-t-tell-select-committee-35m-it-project-had-been-axed
Coining the words of Judge Peter Mahon from his investigation of Air New Zealand’s Mount Erebus crash, we’re looking here at an “orchestrated litany of lies”.
In order to whitewash this ugly stain of public service malfeasance, Roche has brought the Old Firm back together. Yesterday Roche announced he’s appointed – you guessed it – Michael Heron KC to head the “inquiry”. Labour leader Chris Hipkins has joined the whitewash working bee, saying it’s not up to Parliament to decide whether Blakeley or any other public servant should lose their job, and deferring to Public Service Protector & Defender Roche to decide.
Roche has already kicked one of his cans of whitewash down the road, telling media that the inquiry is likely to take several months to complete due to the "serious nature of these allegations, the complexity of the inquiry and the need to meet procedural fairness requirements". By which time, there’ll have been a general election and this whole tawdry pond of the swamp of ineptitude and deceptions will mainly be forgotten.
But there’s a limit to how much of this insulated public sector wrongdoing New Zealand’s general public can take. Before long, ordinary New Zealanders will demand radical reform, including reinstating direct accountability of public servants to democratically elected Government Ministers.
John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced
3 comments:
Nobody will go to jail, that would be a costly ridiculous process but they should demand their wages back because they were not working but playing from home.
Anybody above and below in the project management need to be dismissed for life from the Govt. sector.
The company involved should be served with a repayment demand. The alternative is worldwide reputational damage for all in the organization posted internationally and any associated person for ever in any other organization for life. Make it stick.
What an outrageous waste of $38million over nearly 10 years, and did that cost include staff time or was that what was only paid to NEC and consultants?
Just think what that money could have achieved by way of new equipment for our aging fire trucks and ambulances, or perhaps put to medical screening or cancer research and treatments or, with just shy of an additional $11million, it could have funded the kapa haka festival for three years. But I digress.
Aside from a disclosure of all of the costs, who is precisely to blame and what punishment they are to face, I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know what bespoke tailoring was really necessary in the biometrics scanning to warrant such anexpenditure? To spend so much and to end up with nothing is way beyond incompetence and ineptitude, and so who was formulating and recommending this 'tailoring' in addition to the individual(s) who ultimately signed it-off? For the latter might well have retired, but those doing the recommendations and oversight could well still be in a position to inflict more damage and, they too, also need to be brought to account.
The outcome of the Commissioner's inquiry will very likely determine if his role and jurisdiction may also need review.
How can public servants not have direct accountability to Ministers? When I was employed as a junior officer at the New Zealand Post Office in 1971 I was told in no uncertain terms about my responsibilities to the public, the requirement to be politically neutral and to keep my opinions to myself.
We were all told we could lose our jobs if we stepped over the line.
I bet no PS employee gets that message directly these days.
The solution is delivering expectations or consequences will follow.
MC
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