The Whitehead Report does not exonerate Murray McCully

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, February 7th, 2016 - 11 comments
Categories: International, john key, journalism, Media, Minister for International Embarrassment, national, same old national, the praiseworthy and the pitiful - Tags: ,

Tania Billingsley

The Malaysian Diplomat with unusual behavioural mannerisms and odd ideas of the meaning of consent and invitation has now been sentenced to home detention on the charges that he faced.  The young woman involved, Tania Billingsley has been completely exonerated.  Attempts to discredit her have backfired spectacularly.

Following the sentencing the Whitehead Report has been released.  The report canvasses the events surrounding New Zealand’s request for diplomatic immunity to be waived and the Malaysian Government’s declining of that request.

The incident happened on May 10, 2014.  A waiver of diplomatic immunity was sought on May 12 and declined by the Malaysian authorities on May 21.

The matter then went quiet until June 25 when media enquiries kickstarted further activity.  By July 1 the Malaysian authorities had claimed that New Zealand had offered an alternative result to the declining of the waiver in a nudge nudge wink wink sort of way.

The basis for this appears to be the email that accompanied the request for waiver.  It said:

I am attaching a third person note seeking a waiver of Mr Ismail’s immunity from your government. Police tell me he is now on bail and is due to appear in court on 30 May as he did not state that he has full inviolability from detention and arrest and immunity from prosecution. Despite not mentioning his status to police, it is still necessary for us to seek a waiver which must be express. If he were to complete his posting prior to 30 May and return to Malaysia with his family, that would be the end of the matter.

The report has concluded that this email inadvertently led the Malaysian authorities to think that a waiver would be tolerated.  The primary recommendation, that in future all emails accompanying formal requests should be functional only, is appropriate.

Various emails have also been released.  They show that McCully was advised the day after the diplomat had been arrested of the incident and that there were concerns about the diplomat’s mental status.  After initial activity the emails suggest that everything went quiet after the Diplomat returned home until media requests by the Sunday Star Times caused interest to increase.

No doubt the Government will try and blame the poor public servant who wrote the email and suggest that McCully has been exonerated but there are two aspects about this case that they need to wear.

Firstly it seems clear that the Government was concerned and became active only when they became aware of media interest in the case.  Before then there is no sign of there being any interest in the case.  The one thing that stirred McCully and the Government into action was the thought of adverse media.  The “please explain” session between Murray McCully and the Malaysian on June 30 should have occurred immediately after the diplomat had left the country, not after the story had broken.

Secondly it seems clear that the officer wrote and sent the email without it being reviewed by anyone and no other party was copied into the email.  It makes you wonder about the effects of McCully’s 2011 reorganisation of MFAT where 79 foreign policy and corporate services jobs were lost.

More investigation into McCully’s actions is warranted.  It is hard to understand how the most serious incident involving diplomatic status in New Zealand in many years only received his full attention only after the media reported on it.

11 comments on “The Whitehead Report does not exonerate Murray McCully ”

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  1. Tautuhi 1
    7 February 2016 at 10:11 am

    Murray was too busy overseeing his and John Keys Saudi Arabian agricultural investments?

    • Draco T Bastard 1.1
      7 February 2016 at 4:00 pm

      More likely that he was too busy going round telling people how important he was while a) trying to avoid doing any work b) greasing palms and c) kowtowing to people he thought are more important than him (this does not include voters in NZ).

  2. tc 2
    7 February 2016 at 10:12 am

    Yes but the same media who raised it don’t follow up and run down the story, muzza should have been under intense media scrutiny over this very disturbing incident not just a tid bit now and then.

    If they did sheep gate may have been a bridge too far for him, who knows.

    It’s another example of how owned the MSM in aoteoroa is too have not nailed mccully as, like Judith/Gerry etc, he knows where the bodies are so he gets little scrutiny.

  3. Keith 3
    7 February 2016 at 11:32 am

    Everything this government does is based on bullshit appearances and how they quietly set up the media narrative in the shadows, vis a vis the corporate medias hurridly arranged narrative following Nationals embarrasment over the protests and the dildoing of the number two in Keys government. That it went international makes Key and National a laughing stock!

    But in this case they clearly didn’t have a clue what to do when this diplomat was locked up, which is incompetent in the extreme. And culling staff definitely would have made things worse because I can safely guess experience would have helped. But as long as it got no publicity it would have died a death. Therefore we can safely assume there have been other examples that have escaped our attention.

    • Andrea 3.1
      7 March 2016 at 6:18 pm

      what, like McCully having an affair with [r0b: deleted specifics]?? … no wonder he was distracted !!

  4. Tautuhi 4
    7 February 2016 at 12:04 pm

    McCully and Key were always going to hang it on someone else.

    • Draco T Bastard 4.1
      7 February 2016 at 4:02 pm

      Yep. Despite the fact that RWNJs always go on about personal responsibility they will never take responsibility when they should.

    • Matthew Whitehead 4.2
      8 February 2016 at 1:18 am

      They’ll try to. The report makes it pretty clear there were some failures at MFAT that didn’t help, but it’s also pretty obvious the Minister dropped the ball, too.

      Oh, and it’s nice to be able to discuss this issue again now that the report has been released.

  5. Macro 5
    7 February 2016 at 1:13 pm

    All of the above.

  6. Lucy 6
    9 February 2016 at 8:07 am

    Tried to read emails – large amounts redacted and the officials obviously have limited English and do not have access to any of the diplomats that they are looking after. It seems to me astonishing that the diplomats can just not take calls from MFAT and no one does anything. Most jobs if someone won’t pick up you go and see them. Obviously all the gutting of the department means that people who can do the job have left – leaving NZ open to issues.

    • Lucy 6.1
      9 February 2016 at 8:17 am

      Can’t edit and did not reread before posting (damn ipads).
      Did not mean to say officials had limited English – meant the standard of English was not what used to come out of the department. Diplomats used to have a different standard of English in the 70’s – 80’s the memo’s were formal. The memos that were attached to the emails were still in that format it was the email that were ambiguous and chatty with stuff about “talking points” all not written in formal style.

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