McCully's cult of secrecy

Treasury documents relating to Vote Foreign Affairs in Budget 2012 have been withheld from release on the specific direction of Minister Murray McCully says Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson Phil Goff.

“On June 29 Treasury released its budget background documents for every ministerial portfolio except Foreign Affairs.

“When I inquired through the clerk of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee as to why the documents had not been released, Treasury officials said they had been ‘withheld on the direction of Mr McCully’,” said Phil Goff.

“It is dishonest of Mr McCully to now say he wasn’t asked for the documents as they would have automatically been released but for his intervention.

"What has Mr McCully got to hide? Why is he the only minister to have suppressed this information? Why was he the only minister to have censored two thirds of the briefing papers prepared for him by his department as the incoming minister before releasing them? Why does Mr McCully indulge in such a cult of secrecy?

“Mr McCully was also the last minister to release answers to written questions on the budget estimates six weeks after he had received them from the select committee.

“Foreign Affairs had prepared the answers but I am told they were sitting in his office.

“He was asked by the clerk of the select committee for them last week. He finally released them at 5.59pm on Monday evening, two hours after I had put out a press statement questioning why we had not been given the answers.

“His claim to the media that I already had those documents was also deliberately misleading on that count,” Phil Goff said.