Where Do Our Tax Dollars Go: A Case Study (Part 21) - ‘Selectively’ Human Resources

Disclaimer: The views in this post are my own, based on my lived experience and personal recollection. My ERA proceedings against the Department of Internal Affairs are ongoing. All supporting documents and evidence will be disclosed through that process.

Many years ago, I was working in a well-known multinational organisation. A member of my team yelled at me in a meeting while his manager sat in the room and said nothing. I did not go to HR. I went to the general manager of our department and told him what had happened. I said I was there as a courtesy, because it was the first time, and I wanted him to have the chance to put it right. I said that if it happened again, I would go to HR.

Within the hour, he had acted. He spoke to the team member, gave him a written warning, and called me back to say it would not happen again. If it ever did, he said, his door was open. One leader settled the matter in less than an hour, and HR never needed to hear about it.

HR has generally been a quiet presence in my working life. At another multinational I interviewed for one role, and by the end of the process the hiring manager and HR had decided together that I was better suited to a higher one. They gave me that role, with the salary that went with it.

In Qatar, HR and my hiring manager wanted to make me permanent while I was still a contractor, and they wanted my title to reflect the managerial and lead work I was already doing.

When I later applied for my New Zealand residence visa, another HR team there wrote me letters that described my role accurately. Years after I left one employer, I went back for documents, and HR gave me what I needed.

Across the United States, the Middle East and India, HR stayed out of daily work, hiring managers were capable of talking to their own people, and HR was cooperative whenever I needed them. I arrived at the Department of Internal Affairs believing that was simply what HR was.

Then I met Viktoriia Bragina.

I first took my concerns about Simon Dannefaerd to HR on 4 February 2025, after a meeting with him that I had asked Andy James beforehand whether it was safe to hold. Viktoriia Bragina received them, and from that day she handled my complaint. I expected what I had known elsewhere, someone who would listen and then act. What I was offered was an informal pathway, and it went on for months.

In March, Kylie Matson emailed me, copying Andy James and HR. Her email said she had been seeking advice from HR and had been encouraged to put her concerns in writing. I asked for a formal investigation of both complaints so that the facts could be established. Viktoriia Bragina declined. When I pressed, she gave me her reasons. I recall her telling me that if I filed formal complaints and there was an investigation, it would be very difficult for me to manage my mental health. I recall her saying it could become a he said/she said situation, and that managers are usually at a disadvantage. She also mentioned that there might be retaliatory complaints. I had gone to HR to have a complaint taken, and I came away having been advised that it might be bad for my health.

Kylie Matson withdrew her complaint six days later. The communication plan built around it stayed, and it constrained only me. I asked Viktoriia Bragina and Andy James whether Kylie Matson had been told that the plan came from my complaint. They said she had not. I asked why, and they did not say.

During those weeks I noticed how much time Andy James spent with Viktoriia Bragina. I was told he met her every day about the team, and more than once I saw him coming out of a meeting with her. She had asked me to send my concerns to her in writing, so I did. Then Andy James told me I did not need to write everything to her, because he would pass it on. That arrangement meant a complaint about a member of Andy James's team would reach HR through Andy James. I still find it incredible that both the Director and HR had to work together to handle an informal bullying complaint, but the behaviour still continued.

I recall Viktoriia Bragina telling me, in one of those meetings, that Simon Dannefaerd had informal complaints against him from before. She also told me that Fraser Buchanan had once raised a formal complaint about him that ended in a written warning. When I later raised it with Fraser Buchanan, he had no recollection of it. It seems like HR in DIA holds two different records for an employee’s complaints - the ones that were substantiated and the ones that resolved 'informally’. This information came from HR themselves, so I had no reason to doubt it. I am not sure if that is a common practice in public services in New Zealand or whether it is unique to DIA.

By May I had a formal complaint in, and a meeting set for 11th June 2025 with Viktoriia Bragina and Andy James. What follows comes from the notes I wrote that day, which I am publishing with this post (you can read them here). I brought my support person, and I had written a statement, because reading helps me stay composed when the subject is hard. I asked for a formal investigation. Partway through, I became emotional. Neither of them offered a tissue or a glass of water. My support person had to suggest I stop and breathe.

I asked how many times they had spoken to Simon Dannefaerd. Viktoriia Bragina said several. I pointed out that this was the first time the two of them had sat down with me about my complaint. She nodded and said nothing. Then she told me that if I refused mediation with Simon Dannefaerd, I would be forcing them to choose between the two of us i.e. Simon Dannefaerd and me. I heard that as a threat to my employment, so I asked what would happen to my complaint if I left DIA. She said that since there was no formal investigation, there was nothing to happen, and that I could not follow it up once I was no longer an employee because it was an internal matter. I thanked her. It was what I needed to know.

Then she suggested special paid leave. I said my team needed me, and that I did not want to add to the narrative that I was emotionally unstable, which I had heard several times in that room. I asked for the notes of that meeting and the reasons behind their decision. DIA never provided either.

The day after I told them I was prepared to take my complaint to the Chief Executive, Andy James raised concerns with HR about a private note I had handed him on paper in May. He did it verbally. DIA's OIA responses confirm that no written complaint exists. I asked for the metadata of my private note as well, and there was none, because I had given Andy James a paper copy. DIA's disciplinary policy says allegations from another person are usually verified before any process begins. DIA has told me it undertook no verification. Seven days after that meeting, DIA had found a process. It found one for Andy James’s alleged concerns about me. On 18th June it found one again for the complaints that Simon Dannefaerd and Kylie Matson lodged against me that day, which were accepted immediately. My own complaint, which began in February, was added to the investigation a week after theirs.

Viktoriia Bragina was in the room on 18th June when I was given a choice between suspension and special paid leave, in a meeting called "HR issues catch-up" with no agenda. I have said that she told me I had no choice about attending without a legal representative. DIA's letter of 20 March 2026 records my allegation. It also records that the General Manager who ran the meeting did not hear it, and that Viktoriia Bragina denies it. I still stand by my account. I had written a follow-up email about the same to Richard Ashworth the following day, which was never acknowledged or responded to.

Later, the Privacy Act disclosures arrived. Among the emails was one from Janine Bridgeman to Viktoriia Bragina, asking whether I had been placed on leave yet. Readers of Part 18 of the series will remember Janine Bridgeman. She is a PSA organiser, and she supported Simon Dannefaerd and Kylie Matson through their complaints against me. Simon Dannefaerd and I were both PSA members. I recall Viktoriia Bragina telling me that she had worked with Janine Bridgeman before. I also recall her telling me that Janine Bridgeman came to see her and Andy James with Simon Dannefaerd while my informal complaint about Simon Dannefaerd was still open. I would like to know why an organiser was asking HR about my leave, and why HR engaged. From where I sat, HR was taking its cues from the person supporting the man I had complained about.

If Viktoriia Bragina was the first person I dealt with in HR, Ben Cave was the person with the authority to correct the course. He is Manager HR Advisory Services. When I escalated my concerns about the process to him, no corrective action followed. On 23rd June he wrote to his team that he was reviewing several complaints in our area and considering grouping them into one independent investigation. He asked them to pause the process with my colleague until he had decided. She had raised a formal bullying complaint about the same man I had. On 29th July, Ben Cave signed the Terms of Reference.

I wrote to Ben Cave more than once. On 27th June I documented my concerns about how the complaints and the investigation were being handled. I asked him about a conflict of interest. I asked about the way Andy James and Viktoriia Bragina conducted themselves together in meetings, and about Andy James's position when I was placed on leave. I asked about Lisa Gibson, whom I knew to be a friend of Andy James, being seconded into my role while I was away. Ben Cave answered some of my emails. He did not answer the ones that raised questions about fairness towards me.

I also asked HR a question that seems to me a simple one. A member of my team had a formal complaint against Simon Dannefaerd. Should I still be doing a performance review or wait for the investigation to be concluded? That email was never acknowledged, let alone answered.

Ben Cave told his colleagues that our complaints belonged together in one investigation, and the Terms of Reference he signed reflect that. Later, DIA's lawyers went to the Authority and asked for my grievance and my teammate's to be separated. It seems to me that DIA has given one account to its investigator, who is herself a lawyer, and another to the Authority. Both cannot be the right account of the same complaints. Whether we are one matter or two seems to depend on who is asking, and on which answer suits DIA at the time.

DIA did engage an external investigator, and I will write about that investigation in another post. One point about its scope belongs here. The investigator was given the bullying complaints. My sexual harassment allegations were never given to an external investigator. Richard Ashworth, who later dismissed me, interviewed Fraser Buchanan himself. DIA's own papers describe the private note matter as behaviour that could amount to harassment of others, and that matter is why I was placed on special leave. So why would DIA hire an external investigator only for the bullying complaints, when the special leave itself rested on a harassment concern?

Put together, it looked to me as though HR at DIA ran two systems. When the person in question had a history, and Viktoriia Bragina herself told me Simon Dannefaerd did, the system was patient. It offered facilitation, a communication plan for me, and mediation with a man she described as very open to it. When the person in question was speaking up, the system turned on them. It happened to me, and it happened to another member of my team.

The Privacy Act disclosures show where HR put its energy once I had a lawyer. When my lawyer wrote in September 2025, Ben Cave advised proposing mediation and having the reply come from the person leading the matter, with Deputy Secretary Myles Ward as the point of escalation. When Simon Dannefaerd told Andy James that someone had been accessing project sites, Andy James took it to Ben Cave, and Ben Cave wrote that my activity was potentially quite concerning given I was not working. I was not working because I had been placed on special leave, after being offered a choice between that and suspension. I was still looking at those sites because I expected the matter to be resolved and my leave to end. In November, when he heard I had engaged Allan Halse, Ben Cave told a colleague a personal grievance was coming. He reminded her that the Chief Executive had received correspondence from Allan Halse before, and he recommended it be managed in the line, including any correspondence with Allan Halse. That is a great deal of attention for an employee whose own questions to Ben Cave went unanswered. In June 2025, DIA's answer to my distress was a proposal of special leave and mediation with the man I had complained about. The letter it sent my advocate on 28th August 2026 (letter headed 'Complaints from Kylie Matson and Simon Dannefaerd – Final Decision’) does not mention the complaint that started it all.

I did not write about DIA while I worked there, even as things went wrong. I still believed there was an employment relationship, and I held on to it long after DIA stopped acting like the other party to it. I started only writing after DIA fired me because the employment relationship did not exist anymore. Had DIA HR followed DIA's own policies, I would have had nothing to grieve and nothing to write about. DIA's lawyers have now asked the Authority for orders to stop me publishing this series. They seem to have forgotten that it was their client who gave me the reason to write it.

Simon Dannefaerd, Kylie Matson, Andy James, Fraser Buchanan and Lisa Gibson now work for the Public Service Commission. So do Richard Ashworth and Myles Ward, who exchanged an email about me on 1 April 2026, the first day both of them became PSC employees.

PSC has told the Authority it had no involvement in my employment or my dismissal, and I agree that my grievance is not with PSC. Even so, PSC is now the employer of the people I complained about, and it carries an employer's health and safety duties towards everyone who works alongside them. That is why I offer the questions below, respectfully, to PSC HR. It may be better placed than I am to put them to DIA. And I trust PSC to look closely at where the risk sits.

Did DIA tell PSC that it was still concluding my allegations against Andy James and Fraser Buchanan after both men had become PSC employees?

On what authority did DIA continue those processes once the two men were no longer its employees?

Was PSC consulted before DIA made findings about people who now work for PSC, and would PSC expect to be?

Richard Ashworth wrote the summary that DIA's final decision relied on, and by then he was a PSC employee. Did PSC know that?

Did DIA tell PSC about the informal complaints against Simon Dannefaerd that Viktoriia Bragina described to me, and if so, what did it say?

Is there a written warning on Simon Dannefaerd's file, and did that file go with him to PSC?

How many people complained about Simon Dannefaerd before I did, and how were those complaints resolved?

My personal grievance of 26 November 2025 set out my allegations of sexual harassment against Andy James and Fraser Buchanan. DIA's letters record one outcome as unable to be substantiated and the other as more likely than not never made. Did PSC receive those outcomes, and in what words?

Did anyone complain about Andy James or Fraser Buchanan before I did, and if so, what became of those complaints?

What have Richard Ashworth and Myles Ward told PSC about me, and has anyone checked it against the record?

If PSC HR would like to hear my side of the story, the evidence behind this series is on my website, and I have been adding to it recently. The Employment Relations Authority holds the evidence too, and my advocate, Allan Halse, can be contacted for anything PSC would like to see. All the evidence when seen together can create a fuller picture of all that happened in the back-office team led by Andy James, since January 2025.

For those of you who have followed this series, I have some good news. The Human Rights Commission has come through. It has begun doing what it is supposed to do. That is a story for another post. One part of the system has started working, and I will keep you updated on where it takes us.

I believe the system can work when the people inside it take responsibility and do what they are supposed to do. All anyone has to do is their job, well, with sincerity and honesty. That is what I set out to do at DIA. If everyone did the same, I believe none of this would have happened, and New Zealand could be a country where speaking up is safe and met with appropriate action, instead of retaliation towards whistleblowers. I think it’s high time we learned from past mistakes and do the right thing going forward.

PS. If you have a story of your own and writing it down feels too hard, I can ghostwrite it for you if that would make it easier. You can stay anonymous.