The under fire chair of Te Whatu Ora, Health NZ, has been sacked.

Rob Campbell had faced criticism from as high up as the prime minister over a LinkedIn post hitting out at National’s three waters policy. It was seen as a breach of the requirement to remain politically neutral.

A statement from health minister Ayesha Verrall tonight confirmed she no longer had confidence in Campbell to fulfil his position.

“I have decided to exercise my power under section 36 of the Crown Entities Act to remove him from this role, effective immediately,” she said.

“It is of vital importance that all Public Service board members, especially Chairs, uphold the political neutrality required under the Code of Conduct which they sign upon appointment.”

But Campbell himself has hit back, telling RNZ it was an overreaction. “I’ve received a letter from the minister which responded to a letter from my lawyers, indicating that she has removed me from that position as chair of Te Whatu Ora. I think that’s a mistake and an overreaction to the statements I made in a private capacity but nevertheless that’s what she’s done.”

He continued: “I think I’m entitled to make comments as a private citizen, which I did in the LinkedIn post. And secondly, the suggestion is that I’ve somehow been offside with the opposition, which given that I spoke to Christopher Luxon earlier today, we discussed the issues.

“I made an apology to him for any personal offense he had taken, he accepted that apology. We had a very nice discussion about it. So I don’t believe there’s any issue there. I’ve seen Richard Prebble from the Act Party saying that he believes I have the right to make statements of this kind.”

Big thanks to those members who helped us celebrate the premiere of our new documentary, Elements of Truth, in Wellington last week. It was an amazing evening and wouldn’t have been possible without your support.

If you’re not a Spinoff member yet, join today to gain access to exclusive events like this along with a world news version of The Bulletin and heaps more. Better yet, every contribution exclusively funds our journalism and helps keep The Spinoff freely available to all. Find out more here.

A leading figure from the Act Party’s origin story has come to the defence of embattled health boss Rob Campbell.

The chair of Te Whatu Ora has been under fire this week after he criticised National’s three waters policy announcement in a post on LinkedIn.

That post was quickly condemned by many, including the prime minister who said the comments were out of line. Campbell  instead doubled down, saying that he was acting in a private capacity and should be political neutral – not politically “neutered”.

Act’s David Seymour went as far as to call for Campbell’s head. “It should be cut and dried with an announcement that Campbell is gone today. Anything less is would be a major disservice to the public service,” he said.

But Richard Prebble, a former Act Party leader and figurehead within the party, said otherwise. “Unless this Public Service code that says that board members must ‘act in a politically impartial manner’ refers purely to their actions as board members then it is unjustified censorship,” he said.

“Rob Campbell should be judged purely on his performance as a chair and not for his silly political views. As a Chancellor of one of our universities Rob Campbell has a duty to defend free speech and that includes his own. He cannot accept being gagged.”

Seymour told The Spinoff he hadn’t seen Prebble’s remarks, but compared it to if a judge was “slagging off” a lawyer’s client on social media. “They’d be asking for a different judge,” he said. As chair, Campbell was accountable to the New Zealand public, said Seymour, and that included any potential future government whether Labour or National-led.

Richard Prebble on the campaign trail in 1999. Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images

A candidate hoping to replace Grant Robertson as the Labour Party MP for Wellington Central has been accused of a “data leak” after mistakenly sharing the personal email addresses of party members in a message to “hundreds” within the electorate.

Microbiologist Gail Duncan, one of a handful in the running to become Labour’s Wellington Central candidate, emailed members of the party in the electorate this week to introduce herself. It was an opportunity to put her name out to the electorate ahead of a party selection meeting on March 19. “It’s going to be quite a ride, but an essential one as Wellington Central must remain a Labour Party seat,” said Duncan in the email, obtained by The Spinoff.

“My heart has been with the Labour Party since I was a teenager in the 1970s when Norman Kirk was elected.”

But Duncan had forgotten to hide the email addresses of the people she was contacting – they were all CC’d onto the email rather than BCC’d. That meant the details of dozens of party members were visible. The Spinoff has seen the list and identified the private email addresses for a current cabinet minister, a former prime minister and ministry officials.

One recipient told The Spinoff they were concerned their personal email address had been shared far and wide.

“This appears to be a very serious data leak and I’m very concerned that my information has been sent to hundreds of individuals,” they said.

The Spinoff approached Duncan for comment on the mishap, but she said she was bound by Labour Party rules not to comment on party selections.

However, Rob Salmond, the party’s general secretary, acknowledged the leak. Only party members should have received the email, he claimed. “Labour is aware that an email was sent from one of our Wellington Central candidates to party members in the electorate, which included those members’ email addresses in the CC field instead of the BCC field,” Salmond told The Spinoff.

“Several hundred Labour members in Wellington Central received this email, which contained the email addresses of their fellow members. I have spoken with the candidate concerned, who is deeply apologetic for this error.”

The concerned recipient said while they were on on the mailing list for the Wellington Central seat, they were not a member of the Labour Party.

As reported by the Herald this week, there are four nominations to be the next Labour candidate in Wellington Central. It includes Claire Szabo, the former party president, and sitting list MP Ibrahim Omer. The Greens have put forward current councillor Tamatha Paul who will be running a two tick campaign for the seat.

In a new one-off documentary special coming to The Spinoff on March 7, skateboarder Amber Clyde works to get back on the board following the birth of her second daughter. No stranger to the challenges of the skate park, Clyde founded Girls Skate NZ to empower and educate young women in the sport. For the first time, Clyde brings audiences inside the challenges of her everyday life from teaching classes at the bowl, to managing the hurdles in her personal life – all while trying to find the confidence to get back on the board.

Back on the Board is made with the support of NZ On Air.

The prime minister has blamed “incorrect” information from police for his comments last week that appeared to downplay crime in cyclone-hit regions.

There were reports, particularly from Hawke’s Bay, of firearms crimes and looting in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle. That included claims a traffic worker had a gun pulled on them. At the time, Chris Hipkins said there was no “state of lawlessness” and that the police were well equipped to deal with the situation.

Now, speaking to Newshub, Hipkins has apologised – and seemingly backtracked. “I regret that one of the comments that I made was taken to be questioning the authenticity of what people were saying. The information that I had from the police, at that point, was clearly incorrect,” he said. “Absolutely, I regret the fact that the intel I had was incorrect at that point.”

There continued to be unsubstantiated rumours, the prime minister said, including suggestions a Gun City store had been ram-raided. “It simply isn’t true so I just think people need to be a little careful about making sure where things have actually happened, that they’re reporting those to the police,” he said.

The broadcasting watchdog has reprimanded Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan over an interview with a teen climate activist last year.

The segment saw the prominent drive show host speak with 16-year-old Izzy Cook, a spokesperson for the Schools Strike for Climate movement. During the interview, du Plessis-Allan revealed that Cook had recently travelled to Fiji, apparently contradicting her climate-focused beliefs. This, according to the Broadcasting Standards Authority, resulted in du Plessis-Allan “hysterically laughing at, and teasing the interviewee for over a minute”.

A response by Cook’s mother published on The Spinoff was one of our most widely read pieces in 2022.

NZME, the owners of Newstalk ZB, previously upheld a complaint against du Plessis-Allan’s interview, stating it breached the fairness standard. But the complainants referred their complaints to the BSA on the basis they believed subsequent actions by the broadcaster were insufficient.

In a new ruling, the authority said it too would have found a breach of the fairness standard, but considered the action taken by the broadcaster – including apologies to the teen activist by du Plessis-Allan and NZME – was sufficient to address the breach.

“Overall, we found the interview went further than simply critiquing and questioning SS4C’s policies and the interviewee’s alleged hypocrisy, and instead amounted to ridicule, which was unfair,” the BSA said.

“We acknowledge there was foreseeable harm in the form of embarrassment in the moment for the activist, and further ridiculing/bullying online. The apology on air did not appear genuine and was used as an opportunity to further mock and criticise the interviewee.”

NZME had acknowledged and recognised the breach in the first instance, upheld the complaints under the fairness standard, apologised to the interviewee in its decisions, and advised du Plessis-Allan also apologised to them privately.

Homes have slipped down slopes and been turned into rubble. Roads have fallen off cliffs and cut residents off from the outside world. Helicopters are delivering food and other supplies. One mum told us she tentatively walks her teenage son across the damaged roads so he can attend school several days a week.

In the West Auckland suburb of Karekare, the damage caused by Cyclone Gabrielle is everywhere you look. “We’re in a real fragile state,” local volunteer fire chief Toby Hyman told us. “Our roads are trashed … any time that earth could continue to move. You could end up down the bank.”

Today’s coverage of Karekare reports residents are sick of waiting for help and are fixing the community’s infrastructure for themselves. They’re clearing roads with diggers, putting power poles back in the ground and, at one point, attempting to use a drone to reconnect power cables.

Local photographer Ted Scott has been out documenting the damage. He sent us these photos of what residents are dealing with.

More: Faced with disaster, Karekare residents are fixing things up for themselves

The government has launched an international appeal and special Lotto draw to raise funds for cyclone recovery. After the Christchurch earthquake, a similar mix of appeal and Lotto draw raised just under $100m. The Lotto draw raised $8m.

A spokesperson for the Problem Gambling Foundation said it was “disappointing” to see the government using a gambling operator for community funding, considering how much harm gambling does to the communities themselves. New minister for internal affairs minister Barbara Edmonds said “Lotto New Zealand is fundamentally driven to raise funds for our communities.”

Reflecting on a review of Lotto community funding last year, then minister of internal affairs Jan Tinetti said she was considering cutting the link between gambling and charity. “We’ve coupled community funding with gambling for a long time and maybe that’s not such a good thing,” she said. Wairoa mayor Craig Little said the Lotto draw was a “wonderful idea”.

Want to read The Bulletin in full? Click here to subscribe and join over 36,000 New Zealanders who start each weekday with the biggest stories in politics, business, media and culture.  

The already cyclone-stricken region of Tairāwhiti has been hit with more rain overnight, prompting evacuations and further flooding.

The local Civil Defence said that heavy rain has caused drains to flood and creeks to rise to about two metres overnight. “There is severe surface flooding for the whole of the Mangapapa,” a post on Facebook said.

A “number of families” have either evacuated or self-evacuated from Mangapapa. Families have either evacuated to the House of Breakthrough on 7 Potae Avenue or with whānau and friends.

“Police are going door to door checking on people and advising of their evacuation centre,” officials said. Roads in and around the areas from Lytton High School to Winter Street have been closed.

And the rain hasn’t stopped. According to Civil Defence, “intense rain” – potentially another 30 to 40 millimetres – is expected to fall this morning.

Gisborne mayor Rehette Stoltz told RNZ that the downpour started at about 3am. “The rain woke everyone up in Gisborne… It’s rain I have not heard in my 22 years in Gisborne.”

In Hawke’s Bay, parts of which were devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle, there have also been reports of flooding overnight. Civil Defence said there had been “low level surface flooding” in parts of the region. Locals were warned to avoid driving through any floodwaters and to keep off the roads if possible.