Opposition leader Chris Hipkins is calling the review of Kāinga Ora by former Prime Minister Sir Bill English a "political hit job".
Newshub revealed on Tuesday Housing Minister Chris Bishop appointed Sir Bill, the lead author of the $500,000 report into the Government landlord, two weeks before informing his Cabinet colleagues. The $500,000 used for the review came from the fund that pays for transitional housing.
Text messages between Sir Bill and Bishop were also revealed, where the former PM offered to help and the Housing Minister replying, "Excellent, let's do that".
Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch said it wasn't unusual for former politicians to be appointed to such roles as the Kāinga Ora review but noted the timing of the text messages was "interesting".
"Interestingly, I got in touch with the Public Service Commissions about this yesterday - to see if there are any rules around ministers appointing people to these roles," she said on Wednesday.
"When it comes to these reviews, there doesn't seem to be any kind of guidelines or any kind of rules that they need to follow - basically, it is just the responsibility of the minister to handle the review - it is the responsibility of the minister to find someone to do it and they can just do that however they want.
"It doesn't appear any rules have been broken in doing so."
While no rules have been broken, Hipkins fired up about the review - saying the Government "dressed this up as an independent report".
"It's not an independent report, this is Chris Bishop texting Bill English saying, 'I want a review on Kāinga Ora, I want it to say this, I don't want you to talk to Kāinga Ora,'" Hipkins told AM on Wednesday. "It's a political hit job, it's a piece of spin dressed up as an independent report."
While Kāinga Ora's acting chair told Sir Bill in a letter there was "relatively limited engagement with our organisation, leading to some review conclusions appearing to be based on analysis informed by anecdotes", Bishop said that was "their perspective, not mine".
Kāinga Ora's letter to Sir Bill also took exception with a number of the report's findings, alleging there were many factual errors - their list of mistakes is three pages long.
Hipkins went on to say Sir Bill "ultimately delivered the report Chris Bishop asked him to".
"I think we can just take this report for what it is - it is just a political piece of spin rather than a genuine attempt to independently review Kāinga Ora," he said.
"They need to get on and build houses - the problem is the National Party are trying to create... crisis to justify stopping building houses. Our Government was building more houses than any Government since the 1960s, that means Kāinga Ora took on more debt... to do that - but they were taking on more debt because they built more houses."
Bishop said on Tuesday he "absolutely" followed proper processes in appointing Sir Bill.
Newshub.
