Integrity Briefing: Calling the C-word in the Police cover-up scandal

New Zealand is in the midst of a debate over a single word: “corruption.” The explosive police cover-up scandal involving former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming and then-Commissioner Andrew Coster has rattled public trust. But is it corruption?

In a country that prides itself on being “least corrupt”, many leaders are tripping over themselves to avoid the term. This reluctance at the top is now part of the scandal’s fallout, raising deeper questions about our national psyche and whether we can confront ugly truths about power and accountability in New Zealand.

A Minister’s slip of the tongue

No one illustrates this hesitation better than Police Minister Mark Mitchell. In a TVNZ Q+A interview yesterday, Mitchell momentarily dropped the guard. Frustrated by how 36 complaint emails about McSkimming were kept hidden from him, he blurted out that “the system… had worked up until the time we had a corrupt police executive. That is where the failure was.” And he repeated it.

It was a stunning accusation for a sitting Police Minister to essentially brand the recent police hierarchy as corrupt. Mitchell even invoked the old adage previously used by Judith Collins, “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”, suggesting any reasonable person would see the behaviour exposed by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) report as corruption in all but name.

But almost as soon as the cameras stopped rolling, the backpedaling began. Mitchell’s office hurriedly issued a follow-up statement walking back the C-word. He “acknowledged the IPCA report did not use the word corruption” and said “on reflection I misspoke.” The minister still said he was disgusted by the behaviour, but he was clearly unwilling to officially label it corruption. The incident speaks volumes: even confronted with “atrocious behaviour” (Mitchell’s own description) – a deliberate cover-up, abuse of power, suppression of complaints, and self-serving deceit – our leaders flinch at calling it what it appears to be.

Mitchell’s reluctance is telling. It suggests political caution and perhaps a fear of the word’s implications. Admitting corruption would demand more drastic action; it could tarnish institutions and reputations. So, instead we get euphemisms: “serious misconduct,” “failure of integrity,” “atrocious behaviour”. Anything but corruption. Mitchell’s instinct was to name the beast; his reflex, and likely advice from officials, was to retract and soften the language.

The “Not Corruption” chorus

Mitchell is not alone. An entire chorus of officialdom seems intent on containing this scandal’s definition. Notably, Transparency International New Zealand (TINZ), who are the very guardians of the country’s clean image, have been at pains to downplay the corruption label. TINZ chief executive Julie Haggie responded to the saga by insisting it was “not outright corruption”, just a “cultural integrity problem”. In her view, what we saw was a grave lapse in managing conflicts of interest and a “misplaced” instinct to protect the organisation’s reputation. So, in her view it was bad, yes, but not the same as brown envelopes of cash changing hands. Haggie even suggested the case shouldn’t hurt New Zealand’s international corruption ranking, framing it as an isolated integrity issue rather than evidence of systemic corruption.

This hair-splitting has drawn sharp criticism. Detractors argue that TINZ’s stance is precisely what enables complacency. By defining corruption narrowly (basically excluding anything short of overt bribery or criminal collusion), TINZ provides cover for the very Kiwi style of corruption that exists.

As one commentator wryly put it, “New Zealand is the least corrupt country because we’ve perfected the art of doing it politely. No bribes needed – just quiet words and bureaucratic back-scratching.” The McSkimming cover-up may not fit some sanitised definition of corruption, but it sure looks like the textbook definition of “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” Senior officials abused their power to protect their mate and their own careers. If that isn’t corruption in spirit (if not in law), what is?

Even the IPCA itself avoided the word in its report, sticking to “serious misconduct”. This avoidance has real consequences. It sends a subtle signal that maybe this scandal isn’t that bad, but just a cultural issue, a few mistakes. It risks minimising a saga that, in truth, strikes at the heart of public trust.

As Amelia Wade observed in the Sunday Star-Times, the official finger-pointing and semantic deflections (“passing the blame, protecting the badge”) reveal an institutional instinct to shield the system’s reputation. Everyone from police leadership to oversight bodies seemed more comfortable calling it a lapse or failure, rather than the dreaded C-word.

Duck tests and common sense say that it is “corruption”

Outside the halls of officialdom, however, a very different narrative is taking hold. A growing number of commentators, legal minds, and public figures have effectively said: Stuff the semantics and call it what it is. They argue that New Zealand’s squeamishness over the term “corruption” is obstructing honest accountability.

National Party-aligned commentator David Farrar encapsulated this view succinctly. On Kiwiblog he wrote that by any common-sense definition, the McSkimming affair “was clearly corruption. It was clearly dishonest behaviour by people in authority.”

Farrar pointed to the Oxford Dictionary definition of corruption as dishonest or illegal behaviour by people in authority. Under that plain meaning, how could anyone deny the label? Top police bosses secretly burying complaints, misleading watchdogs and ministers, and orchestrating an outcome to protect their own. It checks every box for dishonest behaviour by those in power.

Farrar acknowledged there’s debate about whether specific laws were broken (could this be conspiracy to obstruct justice under the Crimes Act?). Maybe, maybe not. But legality aside, he argues, the behaviour was corrupt in the everyday sense. You can have a corrupt fiasco even if no individual is convicted of a crime.

Others have been even more scathing. Broadcaster Duncan Garner didn’t mince words, declaring “that is corruption – pure and simple. I’d expect this in South Africa or Italy, not here.” Former politicians and talkback hosts like Michael Laws have hammered the point that this is an institutional corruption problem: “It started at the top” Laws says, with a culture in police leadership of covering up to save face, even if it means perverting justice. When a police executive actively undermines “the most basic of public integrity standards,” as Laws describes, we shouldn’t shy away from the corruption label just because it’s uncomfortable.

Even within Government, not everyone is toeing the polite line. Thankfully, Judith Collins’ use of the duck test made it clear: New Zealanders shouldn’t be naïve. Call a duck a duck. Call corruption what it is.

Is it just “bad eggs” or a rotten system?

Beyond terminology, a crucial debate has emerged: Was this fiasco the result of a few bad individuals, or does it expose a systemic failure? On this question too, there’s a split between the official narrative and the growing public scepticism.

Even former Prime Minister John Key stepped in to soothe that “a couple of individuals” let down the institution, but the bond of trust with police will endure. This view dovetails with the official line that the “system worked in the end”. After all, those individuals were exposed (eventually), proving our checks and balances caught the problem (even if very late).

Columnist Zoran Rakovic has been particularly forceful in arguing that this was no anomaly at all. “Let us say what this was, in plain terms,” Rakovic writes. “It was not an accident. It was not a rogue anomaly. It was a system behaving precisely as it was designed to behave: defensively, bureaucratically, self-protectively.”

In his analysis, the police leadership’s response was the predictable outcome of a hierarchy more interested in avoiding embarrassment than upholding duty. The “error of judgement” excuse offered by officials doesn’t wash with Rakovic: when an entire executive team “looked away” and “had the gall to call it an error of judgment,” it evinces systemic decay, not a one-off mistake. This scandal, he suggests, pulled back the curtain on a structural failure across our public sector. He says that a “bureaucracy first, public last” mentality was present in which protecting the organisation routinely comes before accountability or justice.

Will a new watchdog fix it?

Stung by the public outrage, the Government has scrambled for solutions. Their headline promise: establish a new Inspector-General of Police, a beefed-up external watchdog to keep the Police honest. On paper, it’s a significant reform, modelled on the Inspector-General for intelligence services, with broad powers to “review whatever files they choose” and cut through stonewalling. It’s a tacit admission that the existing oversight (the IPCA) wasn’t enough. Indeed, this case proved the IPCA can be ignored and subverted by police leadership. So an Inspector-General is meant to be the big fix.

But will it? Many observers are sceptical. After all, more oversight can’t hurt, but it addresses symptoms, not disease. The disease is the culture within Police HQ. As new Commissioner Richard Chambers himself acknowledged, the policies and processes in place were sufficient, but the issue was that “people at a very senior level [decided] to ignore and put aside those processes out of self-interest.” No amount of external auditing will change an organisation that is determined to conceal and defy. A truly pathological culture can find ways around any watchdog, unless the culture itself changes.

We’ve been here before. After the 2007 Bazley Inquiry, dozens of recommendations were implemented and a decade of monitoring ensued. Some improvements happened at the margins, but the core problem persisted. The Independent Police Conduct Authority exists precisely to investigate misconduct like this, yet it was sidelined and actively undermined by Coster and co. Creating an Inspector-General might increase the fear of getting caught, but it won’t automatically instil integrity or courage in the chain of command.

It’s telling that voices like Heather du Plessis-Allan are calling not just for oversight, but for real accountability, including potential prosecutions. She argued yesterday in the Herald on Sunday that only a thorough new investigation (independent of the police itself) can determine if crimes were committed in this cover-up. If so, then yes, senior police, up to Andrew Coster, should face the prospect of charges. Anything less, she suggests, would mean we’re treating this as mere “policy failure” rather than possible criminal obstruction of justice.

In an interview on Newstalk ZB, du Plessis-Allan pressed Commissioner Chambers on exactly this: had the course of justice been perverted? Chambers revealed he had ordered specialist investigators to take a hard look at whether charges like perverting justice might apply. In short, even the new Commissioner knows that to rebuild trust, they must be willing to treat this as potentially criminal corruption, not just a breach of protocol.

This is an uncomfortable moment for the New Zealand Establishment. The idea that our top cops, including a former Police Commissioner, might need to be prosecuted for corruption is virtually unprecedented. It would be a seismic shock to the system. And yet, if their actions meet the threshold of crimes, failing to act would send an even worse signal: that some people are above the law. The coming weeks will show whether the Government and police have the stomach to follow through. The new Inspector-General of Police (whenever that office is set up) will mean little if, right now, obvious wrongdoing is swept under the rug of “just cultural issues.”

Why Kiwis choke on the word “Corruption”

Underlying all of this is a fascinating question: Why are New Zealanders so culturally and politically hesitant to use the word “corruption” in the first place? What is it about that label that makes us squirm, even when faced with conduct that in any other country would be called out as corrupt?

A big part of the answer lies in our national self-image. For decades, we’ve dined out on the idea that New Zealand is basically corruption-free. We have routinely topped Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index; our public sector is supposed to be one of the cleanest in the world.

This has become almost a sacred cow of Kiwi identity: “we might have problems, but graft and corruption isn’t one of them.” It’s a comforting myth, but a dangerous one. When a scandal like this erupts, threatening to shatter the myth, there’s an almost reflexive defensiveness. Admitting corruption would feel like admitting we’re no longer among the top in the world. This is a blow to national pride. It’s easier for officials (and even the public) to say, “this was a lapse, an integrity issue, a one-off” than to concede that corruption, as a concept, does exist here. TINZ’s downplaying of the term reflects this protective instinct over our pristine image. Ironically, by clinging to the image, we risk failing to address the reality.

There’s also a deep-seated cultural reticence at play. Social commentator Gordon McLauchlan famously dubbed New Zealanders “the passionless people.” In his 1970s book by that title, he described a national character that avoids extremes, shuns confrontation, and prefers a quiet, modest consensus.

Decades on, that trait still lingers. Calling your top police brass “corrupt” is a highly confrontational act, as it invites conflict, it demands drastic remedy, it’s “not nice.” Many Kiwis, raised in a culture of “she’ll be right” and polite understatement, are instinctively uncomfortable with such stark labels.

We prefer to believe in the essential decency of our officials. We hesitate to think that someone like Andrew Coster, whom Heather du Plessis-Allan describes as perhaps a “good man who did bad things”, could be guilty of corruption. So we soften it to “poor judgment” or “naivety.”

Our institutional conservatism kicks in. It is a preference for stability over upheaval, for giving the benefit of the doubt. After all, if we admit the police leadership was corrupt, where does that leave us? It undermines trust not just in police, but in the comforting notion that New Zealand’s public institutions are fundamentally virtuous.

This cultural hesitation to confront hard truths isn’t unique to this scandal. We see it in how we handle other sensitive issues, be it political misconduct, corporate cronyism, or historic injustices. There’s a pattern of initial denial or minimisation, followed by begrudging, slow acknowledgement.

McLauchlan’s “passionless people” idea suggests Kiwis often lack the outrage until a situation becomes absolutely untenable. Perhaps it’s born of a small society where calling someone corrupt feels intensely personal. Or of a long legacy of stable, honest government that has left our “corruption radar” under-calibrated. We simply aren’t used to thinking of our elites in those terms, so we resist it.

Towards accountability

In the end, refusing to name corruption only protects the corrupt. The reluctance of people like Mark Mitchell or Julie Haggie to speak plainly, however well-intentioned, risks smoothing over behaviour that demands outright condemnation. New Zealanders should ask themselves: What do we value more: a comforting self-image or the uncomfortable truth? Because only the latter will set the stage for true reform.

For a country that often avoids harsh words, this is a moment to be blunt. The police cover-up scandal was a form of corruption. And acknowledging that is the first step to ensuring it never happens again. If we can’t do that, then perhaps we really are the passionless people, happier to bury unpleasantness than to fix it. But I suspect we have more integrity than that. The public outrage suggests New Zealanders can confront hard truths when pushed. Now our institutions and leaders need to catch up. Drop the euphemisms, and prove that we will not tolerate corruption, by any name.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Director of The Integrity Institute