Somewhere in the Department of Internal Affairs there is a document that describes my knowledge and skills more closely than the people who wrote it ever expected to find in a candidate. This is what happened when they found her, and what it cost everyone when they decided that was the problem.

Last week New Zealand learned that MBIE spent $33 million on a project that delivered nothing. There is another programme. It promised to save $3.9 billion, it has been running for twenty months, and it has shown the public nothing at all.

When a public servant is being harmed at work, they are told there are places to go. WorkSafe. The Public Service Commission. The Human Rights Commission. The Privacy Commissioner. Four agencies, funded by the public to be there for exactly that moment. I went to all of them. Each of them sent me to the ERA. This article explores what happened at those doors, and why it only takes one agency doing its job to change everything.

The government has promised $3.9 billion in savings and a workforce that feels safe enough to speak up. It cannot deliver either without knowing what is actually happening. So someone asked. The Commission's answer reveals a system built to produce activity without ever producing the truth about whether it works.

Writers write. It is how we process, how we think, how we survive difficult days. This is my OneNote. The Department of Internal Affairs used it to remove me from my job.

Something that was never sent to anyone, never emailed, never messaged, handed over in a private moment of trust to someone I considered a friend, became the instrument of my removal from a government job.

I did what the speak-up posters at the Department of Internal Affairs office were asking everyone to do. I sent an email to Paul James reporting bullying. Within 30 minutes, the institution showed me exactly what that was worth.