Budget leak wasn't unlawful but it was unethical, ex-Labour president says

May 30, 2019

“Just because you’ve left your gate open doesn’t mean somebody can come and steal your sheep,” Mike Williams told Breakfast.

Police have concluded the person or persons who leaked part of the "wellbeing" budget on Tuesday did not break the law, but former Labour Party president Mike Williams says even though it wasn't illegal it was still unethical.

Treasury confirmed in a statement this morning that someone "appears to have exploited" a weakness in the agency's website. 

Mr Williams compared the breach to a real world example: "If you've left your gate open it doesn't mean somebody can come and steal your sheep. That's effectively what has happened."

Appearing on TVNZ1's Breakfast today, he quickly dismissed the suggestion that the bizarre saga should result in Finance Minister Grant Robertson losing his portfolio. 

But the information was systematically searched from a website “that was clearly not intended to be public”, officials said.

"It is simply a fault in Treasury which can be easily fixed," he said. "This fault in the Treasury system was there under National, so if this is bad management by Labour it is also bad management by National.

"Treasury has the ability to get the best experts in the world. They screwed up, simple as that...They have to fix it, but a head will roll."

Mr Williams said he believes the reason National released the leaked information on the Budget is "political tactics" intended to "take the shine off the Budget".

"It's a very minor win for National, but I don't think they've handled it very well," he surmised. 

Treasury said the investigation had found one of the IP addresses involved in the searches belonged to the Parliamentary Service.

Simon Bridges says his party has done nothing illegal.

It said the evidence showed "deliberate, systematic and persistent searching of a website that was clearly not intended to be public".

"Evidence was found of searches that were clearly intended to produce results that would disclose embargoed Budget information. Three IP addresses were identified that performed (in the Treasury's estimation) approximately 2000 searches, over a period of 48 hours, which pieced together the small amount of content available via the search tool.

"The IP addresses involved belonged to the Parliamentary Service, 2degrees and Vocus."

Breakfast had initially intended to interview Simon Bridges today, but Mr Williams was called to instead provide analysis of the situation after the National Party leader backed out of the interview late last night. Mr Bridges has scheduled another press conference to discuss the leak later this morning. 

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