John McLean: “OPERATIONAL”

Diametrically disparate attitudes towards political interference in New Zealand’s public sector

In late June 2026, it was revealed that the Independent Police Complaints Authority and the Police’s National Integrity Unit are investigating two historical complaints against current Police Commissioner Richard Chambers. Reports are that the complaints involve allegations of untoward sexual conduct on Chambers’ part, towards women. I’ve no idea about the merits of the complaints.

Police Minister Mark Mitchell has disclosed that one complaint was made in late 2025 and the other in early 2026, expressed confidence in Chambers to continue as Police Commissioner and declined to be interviewed or comment further. Mitchell is awaiting the results of the investigations. His approach is that addressing the complaints is an operational matter in which it would be inappropriate for the Police Minister to involve himself.



Contrast this with the previous Government’s approach to the Police’s operations. In disgraced Andrew Coster, the Labour Government found at the pound an overt lapdog of a Police Commissioner. A man desperate to do the Government’s bidding, on any front. Under Prime Minister Ardern’s direction, Coster effectively suspended enforcement action against criminal gangs and brazen raiders of shops, and stopped investigating property crimes. New Zealand become significantly lawless.

In the aftermath of those hazy crazy authoritarian days of COVID, Coster was also more than willing to play the Police’s part in cover-ups of Ministerial misconduct.

On the evening of 23 July 2023, then Minister of Justice Kiri Allan smashed her car into a utility vehicle parked on Wellington’s Evans Bay Parade. In these fast-moving, modern times, it’s easy to forget significant events. But it’s worth reminding ourselves of Allen’s crash and its aftermath, as a remarkable example of Labour working in lock-step with the Police and the Courts to protect one of The Left’s own.

Drunk and quite likely also drugged, Allan tried to flee the scene of her crime, with Police apprehending her about 500 meters away. Allan physically resisted arrest and a road-side alcohol breath test before having to be handcuffed. When eventually subdued and breath tested in the police car, at 9:32 pm, she blew over the criminal threshold of 400 mcg per litre of breath. She then refused to accompany Police to Wellington Central Police Station. Forced to do so, she told officers she had “written the law” and questioned whether officers had read it. At the police station, she refused to leave the police car and disputed her Court summons. The Minister of Justice slurred that charging her was a “political stunt” and demanded that the summons “disappear”.

At this point, the Labour Machine kicked fully into gear. At 9:56pm, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster texted Police Minister Ginny Andersen foreshadowing a call, following up on the blower to Andersen that Allan was being dealt with by Police following a crash and had blown over the legal alcohol limit. Andersen immediately briefed Labour Party Chief of Staff Andrew Kirton who, at 10:00pm, told Prime Minister Chris Hipkins what was unfolding.

The Police then waited sufficient time (until 11:43pm, more than two hours after her initial criminal reading) for Allan’s evidential breath test to come in under the criminal threshold of 400 mcg (she apparently recorded 335 mcg), at which point the Police were able to issue her with an innocuous (non-criminal) infringement notice for excess breath alcohol.

With the Wokewash in full swing, the following morning Hipkins accepted Allan’s resignation as Justice Minister and, instead of charging Allan with her manifest criminal conduct of “resisting arrest” and “reckless driving”, Police charged her with lesser offences of “refusing to accompany a police officer” and “careless driving”. Police went on to steadfastly and unlawfully resist requests under the Official Information Act to release information disclosing their complicity with the Labour Government to cover for Allan. Eventual release of the Police records revealed the records having been labelled “locked down due to [the] high-profile nature of the person involved”.

Allan ultimately plead guilty to careless driving and also, after crazily contesting it, the charge of failing to accompany a police officer. Judge Brooke Gibson fined Allan $300 for careless driving, discharged Allan on the charge of refusing to accompany a police officer and ordered her to pay $5,296 in reparation for writing off another’s vehicle worth much more than that.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins chimed in, playing the now-familiar mental health card and diminishing Allan’s preposterous criminality by blaming all her conduct on supposed “emotional distress and mental-health difficulties”. Lamestream media produced a plethora of puff pieces portraying Allan as the real victim…and that was that. Job done. A tidy Fabian Team effort.

So, what factors help explain this stark and sinister contrast? The glaring difference between Minister Mitchell’s extreme reluctance to involve himself in the allegations against Commissioner Chambers – a matter the Minister has a legitimate interest in staying on top of – and the demonstrable, concerted conspiracy between the ousted Labour Government, the Police, the public service and the Courts to let Kiri Allan off the hook for her preposterous criminal conduct as Minister of Justice?

What is it that prompts normal, law-abiding politicians to defer to “operational independence” of the public service, when the post-modernist, neo-Marxists (Labour, Greens, Maori Party) have absolutely no hesitation about working in ideological cahoots with the public sector and the Courts to achieve their ends?

First and foremost, in the world according to the crusading Wokerati, the ideological ends justify the means…any means. Rule of law, objective truths, transparency, constitutional conventions, democracy itself…be damned. For adherents to Western traditions and civilization, on the other hand, such things are foundational and essential.

For the forces of Reason, the “means” matter, and produce nuanced, evolving ends that are the products of open and democratic public discourse, elections, law-making and law enforcement. Ends backed by credible, non-partisan Courts that respect the supremacy of a democratically-elected Parliament.

Callous disregard for time-honored rules and principles of reason and rationality are not a by-product of neo-Marxist Identitarianism. Such disregard is a central tenet of anti-Western ideology. Wokery and other belief systems opposed to Western civilization and traditions worship the primacy of subjective feelings and raw power over universalism (and science). Boiled down, the current incarnation of the Left is a dark, nihilistic cult in which Machiavellian elites steal and eat the diminishing collective pie while the plebian rest starve, spiritually (and sometimes - as under Marxist China and the Soviet Union – literally).

A Labour-led Government after the next election could only, and would inevitably, be more radically authoritarian, fiscally irresponsible, contemptuous of the rule of law and generally incompetent than the previous “pure” Labour Government. This is so, Dear Readers, because Labour would have to accommodate, at the very least, the antisemitic batshit crazy Greens. Under such a government, the improprieties and abuses that characterized the Kiri Allan debacle would look, in the rear vision mirror, like child’s play.

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced