Where Do Our Tax Dollars Go: A Case Study (Part 19) - ERA Case Updates

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.

When I started this blog, the goal was to write as things happened. I still want that. Living through the case I am writing about turns out to leave very little room for writing about it, and so does everything else running alongside it. On the off chance that my reinstatement takes long, I am searching for a job in a market that is not making that easy. In addition, I am still trying to hold space for my book, my tech papers and my fictional writing.

So, this is a shorter update than I would like, and it will probably stay that way for a while. What I am not shortening is the evidence. Every document behind what I tell you here goes up on the Google Drive I set up for this blog. You do not have to take my word for it. You can read theirs.

This is the part of the system that is actually working, for now. Case management has started. One conference has already happened, and another is coming up soon.

Before I get into the details, I want to introduce the person hearing this. Claire English is the Employment Relations Authority Member assigned to my case, and there are two things about how she has handled it so far that are worth saying plainly.

The first is procedural, and it matters more than it sounds. PSC argued it should not have to attend case management at all. Ms English told PSC to attend anyway. Hearing both sides before deciding anything is not a high bar to clear, but DIA and PSC have not made a habit of clearing it, so I will take it where I find it.

The second is the reinstatement hearing itself. Claire English has directed that it be heard before the substantive investigation, which will not happen until November at the earliest. Both of those counts, in my experience of this case so far seem fair.

Meanwhile, DIA is still going after a whistleblower it has already fired, over misconduct findings I do not accept, and calling what follows anything other than harassment would be generous.

On 7 August I received a letter from Simon George, DIA's General Manager Human Resources, closing out three matters against me. One was a diary entry. The other two were my sexual harassment allegations, against Andy James and against Fraser Buchanan. Simon George is not independent of DIA. He is DIA. He gave me seven days to respond.

He did not need seven days, because he had already decided not to ask anyone else anything. Let me say that again. Simon George saw no need to talk to the complainant, respondents, or any witnesses to come to the conclusion that the two senior managers who happen to be white men did not sexually harass their brown colleague who incidentally was a whistleblower and spoke up against incompetence and bullying in the team.

My response, sent through Allan Halse, records that Mr George did not intend to approach Andy James, Fraser Buchanan, or Richard Ashworth about any of the three matters, and had not approached the witnesses I had identified to the Department on several occasions. Their accounts went untested. Mine was put under the kind of scrutiny theirs never got.

I believe regular readers of this series remember the so-called "external investigation" conducted by Johanna Drayton. Here is how it actually started. I complained about Simon Dannefaerd's bullying of me and of a member of my team, for 5 months. HR refused to do anything about it, so I escalated my complaint to the Chief Executive directly. Then, the same day I was placed on special leave, Simon Dannefaerd and Kylie Matson filed complaints against me, supported by PSA organiser Janine Bridgeman. DIA appointed Johanna Drayton to investigate those complaints and my complaint against Simon, while they left the private note investigation out to be investigated “internally”. The combined investigation is the one this series has been tracking since July 2025.

DIA sent another letter to my advocate on 28 August 2026 which confirms two findings, that my conduct toward Kylie Matson and Simon Dannefaerd amounted to bullying and, separately, to serious misconduct. What it does not mention anywhere is my complaint against Simon, the one that started all of this.

My complaint against Kylie was never taken up by HR at all. Kylie's complaint against me, by contrast, was investigated in full. Its centrepiece was her claim that I had pressured her into applying for a senior role she did not want. She told DIA's investigator, on the record, "I'm not interested in a leadership role." Kylie has since been promoted into a lead position. I would like someone to explain that to me as well.

There is a particular irony here. In June 2025, I asked HR directly what would happen to my complaint against Simon Dannefaerd if I resigned. Viktoriia Bragina told me plainly that nothing would, since it was an internal matter and I would no longer be a DIA employee. That rule seems to run in one direction only. The "external investigation" that began in July 2025 finally concluded in August 2026, once everyone involved in the complaint was gone. I was terminated. The rest of the team, including Simon Dannefaerd, Kylie Matson, Andy James, Fraser Buchanan, and Lisa Gibson, moved to PSC. To be clear, DIA ran an investigation into staff who, by the time it finished, were PSC employees, not DIA's. I would like to understand in what world this is considered logical or ethical.

The worst part is whose money is paying for it. Those are tax dollars, yours and mine, meant to build good public infrastructure. On this evidence, a public service organisation's real priority is silencing a whistleblower, someone who spoke up, not the public it is funded to serve.

Before I get into what DIA is now asking the Authority to do about this blog, it is worth noting what DIA has already done with it. George's letter states he read my blog posts and relied on them to draw conclusions about my credibility and the likelihood of my own allegations, in the very same letter that used those posts as a reason to withhold information from me. DIA is comfortable using what I write against me. It is only uncomfortable with me continuing to write it.

DIA wants the Authority to stop me writing about any of this. It filed for interim non-publication orders on 13 August. What they are asking for is not a narrow order protecting a few confidential details. As drafted, it would stop me from naming anyone involved in this case, require me to take down what I have already published, and run with no end date until the case is finally decided.

Their stated reason is that publishing might discourage witnesses, or influence what they remember, or make the process look compromised. They have not named a single witness who says this happened. Not one instance of anyone actually being affected. Just the possibility of it, offered as if the possibility were enough.

Here is the part I keep coming back to. DIA has known about this blog since at least May. It said nothing urgent about it for three months. It only applied to stop me writing once the case around it had properly escalated. Does anyone think it is about fairness of the process? Also, I trust the authority will look at all relevant evidence and will be fair and just. Doesn't DIA trust the ERA? Or are they now trying to infringe upon my freedom of speech? If this is allowed, I am concerned that going forward no one will be able to talk about their experiences. We need more people to speak up if we want to stop bullying in New Zealand.

If DIA believes anything I have written is false, there is a law for that. It is called defamation. If DIA believes I have caused harm online, there is a law for that too, the Harmful Digital Communications Act. DIA has used neither. It has asked the Authority for something broader and easier instead, an order that would require no proof that anything I said was wrong, just an instruction that I stop saying it.

I am opposing this in full. Every post on this blog opens with the same disclaimer it always has. I write about my own experience, and I am not aware of having done anything unlawful in doing so. If DIA wants to prove otherwise, the courts are open to it, the same as they are to me.

There is another application pending in front of ERA. PSC wants out. It has applied to the Authority to be struck out of my case entirely, arguing it was never my employer and has no place being named as a party. It has a point, on the narrowest possible reading. I was never PSC's employee. No personal grievance was ever raised against PSC directly. I do not dispute either of those things, and I want to be clear about something I have said before. My grievance is not with PSC. It never has been.

Here is why PSC is in this case anyway. On the evening of 31 March 2026, hours before the rest of my team transferred to PSC by operation of law, DIA dismissed me. DIA's own published timeline had transfer letters finalised and issued to affected staff by 24 March, a full week earlier. I received no such letter, and no communication suggesting I was being treated differently from anyone else on my team. The transfer that swept up Simon Dannefaerd, Kylie Matson, Andy James, Fraser Buchanan, and Lisa Gibson happens automatically under the Public Service Act, without needing PSC's consent, once someone is confirmed as carrying out the relevant functions. I was performing that same role right up until the night I was dismissed. DIA's dismissal is the only reason I was not carried across with everyone else.

I am not asking the Authority to invent an employment relationship with PSC that never existed. I am asking it to recognise that PSC is the only place left where a working reinstatement remedy against DIA can actually happen, because my role and my team now sit inside PSC's structure. If PSC is struck out now, before that timing has ever been tested, the Authority will have accepted, by default, DIA's account of the one fact my whole case disputes, that the dismissal had nothing to do with the transfer.

I do not have a grievance against PSC. But without PSC in this case, there is no fair hearing and no fair outcome available to me at all.

If PSC should have an issue with someone for getting them involved in my grievance case, it should be DIA. If DIA had not dismissed me and I was allowed to move to PSC with the rest of the team, I wouldn't need to include PSC as a second respondent.

For the first time in 18 months, I am feeling slightly hopeful. Maybe DIA will not be able to get away with the discriminatory treatment towards me. Maybe the bullies will face the consequences of their actions. Maybe we will still have a chance to standardise and optimise the back-office operations and save the $3.9 billion promised to us. All of that depends on one thing. I need to be reinstated to my team and given the support to do my job to the best of my capability.

Read the ERA documents here:For DIA Series - MB