Labour leader Chris Hipkins says there is no justification for Education Minister Erica Stanford to use her personal email address for work. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Opposition leader says there is no justification for Education Minister Erica Stanford to have been using a personal email address to access work documents, including unreleased pre-Budget material.
Documents show the Minister forwarded emails to her personal email address, some of which included details of government policies and Budget documents.
She said it was for the purposes of printing documents that couldn't be printed using her Parliamentary email. The printer problem had now been fixed.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Morning Report the printer excuse was not valid because it had been updated the whole time Stanford has been a minister.
The entire system had been replaced since Hipkins himself complained about it in 2018, he said, and the IT systems now allowed for fully mobile ministers to work remotely on phones and laptops including printing.
Hipkins said the government's own security agencies had told all members of Parliament there was much greater risk around using personal emails at a time when "we have more foreign interference, more people trying to hack into our systems - Erica Stanford is basically just hanging out a big welcome sign to them".
He said the Cabinet rules had been updated to say Ministers shouldn't use their email addresses in this way.
"There is simply no justification for it whatsoever," Hipkins told Alexa Cook.
"There's absolutely no excuses for what she's done and in fact the Government are ignoring the advice of their own security agencies who have been very, very clear that the increase in risk in the last few years has been."
However, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon did not have an issue with it.
Luxon said Stanford had been having printing problems and received messages from the public, but had since made changes after his office got involved.
"My office has spoken with her, I understand it's been very few occasions. What I'd say is that she has had tech issues with printing, that's a good example.
"I'm aware ministers in the previous government... used personal emails in the same way," Luxon said.
"I'm very relaxed about it. The reality is she's received unsolicited emails, she's had printing issues, she's had tech issues.
"She's made changes subsequently, she's got the IT support that she needs in place, and I'm very comfortable with it."
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