He maintained he was not even aware of Ms Z\u2019s existence until he was briefed on November 6 and immediately called meetings with the Public Service Commission (PSC) and Solicitor-General to raise his concerns the next day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a father of two daughters, and I have been a local MP for 15 years. And part of my role is protecting people against the power of the state when they butt up against it,\u201d he told Heather du Plessis-Allan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pushed as far and went as hard as I could as a minister to make sure that Ms Z was actually being looked after.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took issue with the way Coster had presented her allegations against McSkimming during the briefing, suggesting the deputy top cop had been presented as \u201ca victim\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a massive power imbalance, where he created a job for a young woman, then she gets discarded, and then she\u2019s sort of butting up against the power of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Police Minister said his earlier communications with the PSC on October 14 had concerned a probity check on the appointment of a temporary commissioner. <\/p>\n
He said he was informed the Independent Police Conduct Authority were assessing some information, but he didn\u2019t know the nature of the complaint or any surrounding details until the PSC prompted the commissioner to brief him.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoster didn\u2019t come forward voluntarily to brief me. He was instructed by the PSC to brief me, and that is when I found out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell also responded to Coster\u2019s comments yesterday denying knowledge of an email protocol directing staffers to divert all emails concerning McSkimming.<\/p>\n
Since December 2023, Mitchell received 36 emails from Ms Z, but claimed the former Commissioner had intercepted her complaints and kept him in the dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice have confirmed that protocol wasn\u2019t put in place, and it was put in place by the commissioner\u2019s office, and it\u2019s unfathomable to think that he didn\u2019t know about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s simply not \u201ccredible\u201d for Coster to suggest he was not aware of the protocol.<\/p>\n
On RNZ\u2019s Morning Report this morning, he defended his staff, who he said were not at fault for the interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m telling you now, they acted appropriately, they acted professionally, and they followed the right process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He maintained he was not even aware of Ms Z\u2019s existence until he was briefed on November 6…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1443,12617,5811,9092,1863,111384,111383,2562,30701,28428,3602,2245,42,33093,6451,32573,33094,6722,5430,43,111386,90,675,7241,2846,107,40,38,41,39,111385],"class_list":["post-172637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-about","tag-absolute","tag-admitted","tag-against","tag-back","tag-blasting","tag-briefing","tag-claims","tag-complaints","tag-denies","tag-earlier","tag-early","tag-headlines","tag-jevon","tag-knew","tag-mark","tag-mcskimming","tag-minister","tag-mitchell","tag-news","tag-nonsense","tag-on","tag-police","tag-publicly","tag-them","tag-then","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-utter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}