Peter Boshier’s unfinished business

Monday, 24 March 2025

Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier is leaving this week, saying goodbye to the job he stepped into 10 years ago.

While he says he’s ready to go, he has unfinished business.

Boshier deals with serious matters. His team looks into agencies not adequately adhering to the Official Information Act (OIA) and also investigates things like Oranga Tamariki uplifts, conditions in prisons and the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle.

“The unfinished business [is] those agencies that haven't changed and haven't taken our moral authority on board,” he tells The Post.

He’s speaking in relation to non-compliance by agencies when it comes to OIAs, the latter of which allows members of the public access to official information.Delays and withholding information are all too common.

“I used to be a judge, and you can be very coercive as a judge,” Boshier says. “You can issue a warrant, you can put people in prison. In this job, none of those things.

“It's the power of persuasion and and virtually all the time we get there. But there are one or two agencies, like Health New Zealand, like Corrections, where I’ve not turned the ship around.”

It’s a shame, he says, “I would have loved to have done so.”

Boshier’s last day is Friday.

The OIA generally requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 working days. Many extend that timeframe because the law provides for extensions. However, extensions are only allowed for requests requiring consultations or involving a large amount of information that would unreasonably interfere with department operations.

“It’s unacceptable for a government agency to delay without any cause, it gives the wrong message, and it’s not what the Act requires,” Boshier said.

“I do think that the non compliance parts of the OIA need to be reconsidered.”

He had gone as far as suggesting, just as a chief executive is held personally responsible for a company that has a health and safety breach, “the same might need to be looked at for official information, so chief executives understand the nature of their responsibility”.

The Ombudsman is also on the other end of criticism over the problems with the OIA - investigations of complaints relating to OIA responses sometimes taking years.

“I don’t think it’s unfair. We’re too slow,” Boshier admits.

Covid saw a “surge” of complaints.

“And we knew that would happen,” says Boshier.

“I don’t think we quite realised the impact it would have with people becoming, in a way, more difficult to deal with. Some became very, very disenchanted with government action, and the sort of complaints we were getting were driven by passion I hadn’t seen before, and I’m using passion somewhat neutrally.

“We’re now getting people who are quite difficult to deal with, that didn’t happen before. ”

There is an initiative at the office to set up a specialist OIA team with new timeframes.

He pauses when asked if compliance has improved since his time in office.

“I think it’s marginally better. I’m not happy with the rate of compliance.”

Latest OIA figures show a 98% on-time responding rate, with 7% of requests extended. Between July and December last year there were 305 complaints, up from 238 for the previous six months.The compliance rate was similar to 2021, when Stuff investigated how long it was taking agencies to respond.

Some agencies who reported 100% compliance 'within legislative timeframes' were extending half of the requests, or taking up to five times the 20 day timeframe.

The Ombudsman’s conversations with agencies “can be very direct, and I make no secret of it that I was so annoyed with Health New Zealand that I got close to having them prosecuted by the Solicitor-General”.

On the other hand, he singles out Treasury as “one of the stellar performers” and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as “very good players”.

Boshier says the issues spur from leaders relegating the OIA to, “we’ll do it when we have the resources to do it”.

“Now, that’s not acceptable to me, because it’s just so fundamentally, constitutionally important.”

If the Ombudsman’s moral authority isn’t being observed by an agency, the chief executive of that agency and Boshier “have to sit down and talk directly about consequence”.

“You’ve got to be prepared in this job to be nice and want to cajole and exercise the power of persuasion, but at other times, you have to get very, very terse and quite coercive.”

By the work, Boshier could be assumed to be a serious guy. Instead, a relaxed-looking Boshier pairs a sturdy handshake with a big grin.

His office is now relatively bare. A precious tapa cloth once hung behind where Boshier sat. A gift when he was given a respected matai title in the Pacific Islands in the 2000s.

The New Zealand flag is neatly folded on his desk, and an intricate patu from Te Arikinui Kuini Ngawai hono i te po displayed proudly.

While the room looks ready for a newcomer, it’s unclear if Boshier is.

Most people welcome birthdays with presents and cake, Boshier’s 72nd earlier this month came with a resignation letter - the law forbids him to carry on as the Chief Ombudsman past 72. He continued to serve until a new Chief Ombudsman was appointed (John Allen, Victoria University of Wellington chancellor and chief executive of WellingtonNZ, will take over from Monday.)

“It is old fashioned,” Boshier says of the law.

“When I was offered this job, I knew that the Act said that I shall resign on a number of things occurring, one of which is turning 72. I have no beef with that, that’s the law and the basis upon which I went into it.

'The interesting thing is that, as you do this job more and you get into what it's about, and the older you get, I think there is a more compassionate way that you look at life.

“I feel I'm more in control of the job now than I ever have been… I think the question is, ‘are you still capable of doing the job?’ I just happen to think that having an age when you're deemed to not be suitable is slightly artificial.”

But he accepts it’s time to go - “and I do that with a happy heart… What I'm not going to do, because this is the modern era, you don't retire… You just do something else.”

Boshier says he was proud the office had grown and was “more visible and more accessible”.

“Now it's a potent office with broader reach. And that's, I think, our major achievement during my time.”

He’s also proud of Pūhara Mana Tangata, the Māori board at the Ombudsman. Boshier said it had “really forged a relationship of trust with Māori”.

“The other thing is, we decided after Cyclone Gabrielle, that we would get out of the office, put on Swanndris and gumboots and go around New Zealand, [to] those parts affected by the cyclone.

“Standing in mud up on the east coast of the North Island, in the cold, talking to people whose lives have just been completely shunted sideways.

“We were actually prepared to come and listen. Because a number of people think that the Crown's there as a matter of functionality, whether anything will come of it, they're unsure. I think they felt with us, we were for real and we could be trusted.”

The only advice Boshier would give to incoming John Allen: “I hope the next Chief Ombudsman likes it as much as I have.”