By Seuamuli Desmond Bentin.
What is the Official Information Act NZ?
“The Official Information Act (OIA) is an important part of New Zealand’s constitutional framework. … The OIA allows New Zealand citizens, permanent residents, and anyone who is in New Zealand to request any official information held by government agencies – including the Ministry of Justice”.27/10/2021
Thank you, Google. Or https://www.justice.govt.nz to be exact.
“Former Ombudsman investigator and the Deputy Chair of the NZ Council for Civil Liberties, Andrew Ecclestone, says the OIA is there for two reasons – to help people contribute and shape government policy and to improve accountability”.
Google again? Nope. Newshub, actually.
Frequently asked questions – Official Information Act requests – NZ Police
- Reports, memos, letters, notes, advice, and emails.
- Materials like tape recordings, videos, or computer records.
- Internal policies or guidelines for decision making and,
- Reasons for decisions made about you.
Do we have an Official Information Act, Samoa? I’m not paranoid. I just know that they’re out to get me!
Sometimes we believe that things are happening too fast and get our knickers in a twist looking for something or someone to blame for the negative impacts of such an act.
The New Zealand Labour government announced their Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan last week and according to the Associate Health Minister, Dr Ayesha Verrall, “While smoking rates are heading in the right direction, we need to do more, faster, to reach our goal”.
Obviously in this case, the government is saying that change isn’t happening fast enough, and the opposition is saying that, well, bad stuff like “black market tobacco”, “crime” and “gangs” will increase, which I think means that they don’t want any changes made to the tobacco laws as they are.
Health professionals are also said to be very happy with the Smokefree 2025 plan while the Dairy and Business Owners Group say they are facing “dairygeddon” and nearly 95% of businesses will be destroyed.
How are things looking in terms of employment opportunities and job prospects for this year’s graduates?
It is always a balancing act choosing between jobs and livelihoods and taking a significant approach to eliminating preventable death and disease as in the case of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.
The last government brought Yazaki, the beer brewers and cigarette packers. Not the best probably in terms of health and social impacts but they provided employment.
I will be the first to admit that I have been away for a few years and probably should find out how current my information is, but that shouldn’t disqualify me from asking the question, right?