I was writing a post about the release of National’s culture review which is one of the most bland management speak documents that I have ever read, but there is only one story right now, who hacked Treasury’s server.
Treasury head Gabriel Makhlouf was on Radio New Zealand this morning. Susie Ferguson describes the interview perfectly in this tweet:
And the details:
New Zealand Treasury chief executive Gabriel Makhlouf has told Morning Report that Budget information taken from Treasury’s website came under attack 2000 times over 48 hours.
Treasury has called in the police to investigate what they are calling a deliberate and systematic hack of the Budget documents on its website.
It comes after National revealed what it says are details from the government’s Wellbeing Budget.
The party released three separate documents which it says reveal the funding for 20 policy areas, including health, defence, overseas aid, and justice.
So the suggestion that the leak was the result of the budget site going live would appear to be incorrect.
For now Bridges is acting tough. I wonder how long it will take to change?
National won’t say how it got the information, but Simon Bridges has gone on the attack saying the party has acted “entirely appropriately”. And he says the Finance Minister Grant Robertson had “smeared us to cover up his and the Treasury’s incompetence”.
He also said Mr Robertson will need to resign when the truth is revealed but he has yet explained what that means and he won’t talk to Morning Report.
The Finance Minister Grant Robertson had agreed to talk to Morning Report, but has deferred to the the chief executive of the Treasury, Gabriel Makhlouf.
I don’t understand why Robertson should resign. IT prowess is not normally considered to be a necessary skill for politicians.
Makhlouf could not rule out the possibility that the hack came from overseas. Subversion campaign anyone?
Right wing twitter is suggesting that this may result in the resignation of Grant Robertson as Finance Minister of Simon Bridges as leader of the opposition. I suspect they are half right. Because as said by Sanctuary if treasury was subject to a serious, politically motivated and clearly criminal cyber-attack to steal confidential government documents and the result of that criminal activity has been splashed across the media by Simon Bridges with zero attempt by him to establish the credentials of the source, then Bridges is in serious trouble.
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