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10:07 am, August 16th, 2026 - 15 comments
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On Wednesday of this week, the day that media was focussed on National’s leadership clusterf&*k, something happened which makes you wonder if the New Zealand Police are as politically neutral as they should be.
A Radio New Zealand Official Information Act request for communications between Labour List candidate Rakesh Naidoo and Police management was responded to. RNZ had asked for communications between Naidoo and Police Commissioner Richard Chambers and anyone else in the Police regarding his intention and decision to stand for Labour.
For some reason the request was not responded to within the statutory timeframe. One would hope that the Police would generally comply with the law. And the request was not a difficult one. A simple search of policce email accounts would have been sufficient.
Instead the information was released at a time which makes you wonder if the Police wanted to bury the release. Because the information blew all criticisms of Naidoo out of the water.
To recap, on June 7 of this year it was announced that Rakesh Naidoo was number 13 on Labour’s list. He was a high ranking Police officer with an impeccable reputation and his candidacy was a real coup for the party.
But the news caused Police Minister Mark Mitchell and Chambers to go to town on Naidoo and make all sorts of allegations against him.
From Adam Pearse at the Herald:
After the list was published on Monday, Police Minister and National MP Mark Mitchell told the Herald he was disappointed Naidoo only disclosed his candidacy a few days before, despite having had conversations with Labour for months.
Mitchell was particularly concerned about Naidoo’s access to sensitive information relating to public safety and Government policy. He did not provide evidence Naidoo had inappropriately shared sensitive information.
Chambers echoed that disappointment in his own statement and considered it “untenable” for Naidoo to continue in his role with police. Chambers later announced the review into whether any information had been shared with any third party during the period Naidoo was in contact with Labour.
Get that? Naidoo was accused not only of not folloing Police rules but also the resources of the state were used to set up a formal investigation into the allegation that Naidoo had passed on sensitive information to Labour.
National mouthpieces chipped in. David Farrar said that Naidoo could have avoided all the fuss if he had told the Police earlier, that Labour had conspired with Naidoo to hide his candidacy, and that Naidoo had left things as late as possible.
But then the information release occurred. And guess what. Naidoo had given the Police earlier notice of his candidacy.
From Sam Sherwood at RNZ:
In a statement to RNZ on Thursday, Anderson confirmed Naidoo spoke to him a week prior to his notification to the commissioner, advising that he had been approached to stand as a candidate in the general election.
“At the time Superintendent Naidoo had not reached a decision on whether to stand and I therefore treated our conversation as a confidential discussion and did not inform the commissioner of this conversation.
“When Superintendent Naidoo spoke to me again the next week to advise that he would be putting his name forward for a list ranking process, I immediately notified the commissioner of Superintendent Naidoo’s intent.”
Anderson said that “in hindsight, it would have been helpful for me to have advised the commissioner of Superintendent Naidoo’s first approach.”
Chambers has refused to apologise. You would think that a simple apology would be warranted after all he accused Naidoo of something that was not true. My view is that his behaviour has become deeply and inappropriately political. And Mitchell has not resiled from his imputation that Naidoo had used sensitive information inappropriately. Even though there is absolutely no evidence of anything intoward happening.
If there is a change of Government then Chambers’ role should be reviewed. The New Zealand Police should keep out of politics.
Agree +100%.
Mitchell and Chambers jumped on his case straight away implying some skullduggery. Naidoo is definitely due an apology from the Minister of Police and the Head of the NZ Police Force Richard Chambers.
The trouble is that neither man has sufficient moral compass to be able to apologise.
Yes agree and commented on it at the time.
Commissioner Chambers has dug himself in so deep with his Minister that a new Labour PM cannot but expreess no confidence to the Governor General when the new Crown entity names come up.
Chambers has made a very risky bet that the government will not change.
His non-reappointment will take most of his tiers 2 and 3 with him, which will be a further revolution in management after the massive McSkimming-related clearout.
An upstanding candidate, Naidoo did all the correct things, but did not choose National! Mitchell went all Trumpian and Chambers felt repudiated (because of his own politics?)
The upper echelons of the Police have had a very rocky few months, and throwing stones while in a glass house is extremely silly, and I for one think Naidoo perhaps wants to be associated with better actions and values. Good for him.
Welcome to Labour, and thank you Naidoo.
The implication that Mitchel discusses things with senior police that can't be shared with the Labour party is deeply troubling. The police are not an arm of the national party.
I can understand having private conversations with the commissioner and getting private briefings from time to time, but most communications should be sensitive but not secret.
Labour is not an enemy.
Correct, not an enemy of the Police, but the Coalition has shaped the current climate of populist adversarial politics to suit their narrative. Look at the infighting within the National Party and within the Coalition – nobody trusts nobody.
"The police are not an arm of the national party"
That's not how the mercenary sees it though.
Politically neutral, my foot! This concept is doing an awful lot of work in the hands of the biased Coalition. There’s a much mission creep from politically neutral to culturally neutral to ideology-free and other ‘neutrals’ that individually and collectively have been weaponised to do the Coalition’s bidding. We can see this in the purge & replace of professional Councils (e.g., Teaching, Medical, and Nursing), of Māori representation, of pay equity, of the Public Service with verdicts from the Inquisitor, of impossible demands of public media to be ‘neutral’, of school curricula, etc.
POTUS 47 regime fast followers in so many different ways.
Broad areas
*a threat to the planet and the local region (Paris Accord, across the conservation estate to the environment)
*the many being worse off
*(above 5) the imposition of no values as a standard
*pandering to the interests of capital in the order of society
*diminishing public (commons) society – including placing obstacles to voting by those renting.
Ginny Anderson the Labour police spokesperson is simply not equipped to deal with the frank brutality of Police politics.
NZPolice tiers 1, 2, 3, are some of the most defensive, right wing, genuinely nasty operators around. They have MoJ and PCO for breakfast and take no step backwards against Treasury when it comes to securing operational budget.
Ginny is great at policy. But unless she has recently grown the guile of a cobra, the existing Police management team will continue to run rings around her even if she becomes their Minister.
Well time for Anderson to show she is prepared to gut NZPolice for assassinating Naidoo. But does she have the chops?
The personal attacks on Naidoo and his integrity by Mitchell was disgusting he has no class (Mitchell) and under his leadership our Police force has spiraled out of control, and they are constantly abusing their powers. Hopefully the next elected government will put a strong man in charge as our police force is still very patriarchal.
Ginny has ample amunition for a clean out of pornography watchers and politically aligned police. Ginny has ethics.
Ministers currently in power like bullying, so to go back to policing with the agreement of the public, bullying and stand over tactics have to go.
Recruting and Training programmes need reviewing asp. including a force of forensic officers to interpret patterns of risks behaviours and trends.
Body cams and teams rather than solo Policing wouid help.
We need far better laws for the under 18 year olds.
We could start with a suitable Minister of Justice.
The removal of cruel and unusual laws.
Just some thoughts.
The boorish yob Mark Mitchell has demonstrated many times that he is a bad influence on the Police. We have seen his public behaviour; it’s a lot worse in private.
There has been talk of him becoming Prime Minister.
This is how low we have fallen.
An Honourable and Genuine person if they realise they made a mistake by spreading mis-information about another should do the Adult thing and Apologise.
Unfortunately it does appear within the senior management of the NZ Police that political influence has become part of the organisation.
Chambers failure to apologise indicates that he is biased towards the NZ National Party and this government.
Maybe Chambers is a Wannabe National MP. Who knows but if he does would NZ First and ACT drag him over the coals like they did to Naidoo???!!! I doubt it very Chambers would be Right Wing in support and no-one in National, ACT and NZ First would try to discredit the guy.