Labour’s Chris Hipkins accuses Police Commissioner of not being a good employer over Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo comments

Chris Hipkins has accused the Police Commissioner of not being a good employer by making statements about one of his own officers that have “no evidential base”.

On Tuesday the country’s top cop, Richard Chambers, announced a review will be carried out into the period during which Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo was engaging with the Labour Party, after he was announced as one of their top candidates on Monday.

Naidoo, who is the ethnic, iwi and communities relationships manager for police, has been ranked 13th on the Labour Party list, which almost guarantees him a seat in Parliament.

After first saying his role with police was untenable and he should have told his bosses sooner of his political ambitions, Chambers is now looking into meetings Naidoo was involved in, any information he was privy to, and whether any of it was incorrectly shared with any third party.

Hipkins told reporters on Wednesday he was “surprised the police commissioner is deciding to play this out in public”.

“He still has a responsibility as a good employer. Rakesh Naidoo has done nothing wrong in putting his hand up to be a member of parliament.

“He is a distinguished and very well respected member of the police force, police members are entitled to put their hand up and say, ‘Yeah, I want to stand for parliament’.

“It does become an employment matter at that point for the police as to how they manage the process.

“I’m very surprised to see the police commissioner choosing to negotiate that through the public - that does not seem like good employment practice to me,” Hipkins said.

“I am very surprised to see the police commissioner making a statement that basically has no evidential base behind it whatsoever and seems to be asserting that somebody is guilty until they’ve proven themselves to be innocent.”

RNZ asked Chambers for a response to Hipkins’ comments and queried why he had made public a review of Naidoo’s police conduct, but a spokesperson said he had no comment to make.

National think otherwise

Christopher Luxon told RNZ he didn’t think Chambers had overreached and got political with his internal review, adding that both he and the Police Minister Mark Mitchell “respect the independence of the police commissioner”.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis, who was at the Fieldays alongside the Prime Minister when he was answering questions, told reporters it was Naidoo who had got involved in politics, not the commissioner.

Hipkins said it was Mitchell who had intervened and was “attacking a member of the police force who has put their hand up to be a member of parliament”.

Mitchell raised concerns on Monday that Naidoo may have had access to sensitive police information and government policy.

That has been rubbished by Hipkins, who said Mitchell shouldn’t be sharing “politically sensitive material with the police”.

“Anybody going from a high-profile role, whether it’s in the police, whether it’s the Reserve Bank, whether it’s the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade, is going to be privy to confidential government information. There is no evidence whatsoever that Rakesh Naidoo has shared any of that with the Labour Party, because he hasn’t.

“Don Brash went from being the governor of the Reserve Bank to being a National party candidate in the space of 24 hours, it was not declared to the government - who was a Labour government at the time - until it was announced. Tim Grosser was on an overseas posting negotiating trade deals on behalf of a Labour government when it was announced that he was going to be a National Party candidate.

“The National Party have a massive double standard here,” Hipkins said.

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