Summarised by Centrist
MBIE chief executive Nic Blakeley has kept his job after the ministry was found to have deliberately misled Parliament, despite offering his resignation and publicly declaring that “accountability rests with me”.
Blakeley’s current remuneration has not yet been disclosed, but his predecessor Carolyn Tremain received a $623,000 remuneration package in 2024/25.
The Privileges Committee found MBIE deliberately misled MPs during a March select committee hearing about its failed Biometric Capability Update project, a seven-year technology programme which cost about $33 million and delivered no measurable benefits before being cancelled.
It described honesty as fundamental to public service and said officials appearing before select committees have an “absolute obligation to tell the truth”. Failing to meet that obligation, it said, was an “insult to the entire public service”.
Yet it recommended no additional punishment, saying the contempt finding itself should be sufficient consequence. Blakeley remains in charge of repairing the organisation whose conduct has now produced one of Parliament’s most serious findings against a government agency.
Blakeley subsequently offered his resignation to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche. Roche refused it.
MBIE issued an apology in which Blakeley said: “As Chief Executive, I accept responsibility for this failure. Accountability rests with me.”
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford’s says “there is a rot” inside MBIE. Yet she has now expressed confidence in Blakeley, saying she believes he can “turn this around”.
ACT leader David Seymour captured the contradiction more simply.
Asked whether taxpayers deserved better from a chief executive position commanding more than $600,000 a year, he replied:
“Most people tell the truth for a lot less money than that.”
Editor’s note:Speaking to Sean Plunket on The Platform, Taxpayers’ Union executive director Jordan Williams said a person “well placed in the public sector” had suggested Blakeley’s resignation may have been offered with an understanding that it would not be accepted.
Williams stressed that he could not establish that as fact.
Plunket said he had independently speculated that the resignation could have been a “setup”, allowing Blakeley to formally offer accountability while remaining in office.
There is presently no public evidence establishing that such an arrangement occurred. But if it did, it would turn an already extraordinary accountability failure into something considerably more serious.
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Re-published from the Centrist with permission
