MBIE Releases Aaron Gilmore Emails – Text Version

Friday, 10 May 2013, 3:37 pm
Article: The Scoop Team

The Ministry Of Business Innovation and Employment has released details of a 2012 email exchange [PDF] involving Aaron Gilmore, who was working for the Ministry as a senior policy analyst.

The "inappropriate tenor" of the emails led to the non-renewal of Gilmore's contract.

Mr Gilmore is currently under pressure to resign as an MP follow his behaviour towards a towards a hotel waiter at Hanmer Springs.

More Information: Aaron Gilmore in emails: This will come to haunt you | Stuff.co.nz

The following is based on automatic text recognition. It lacks the original text formatting and may contain errors. Email headers have been abbreviated. "[...]" indicates a redaction.

Please refer to the original document (PDF).

From: Andrew Crisp
To: [...]
Subject: Re: Housing issues.

Hi [...]

Further to our discussions over the past week I would like to formally acknowledge that the correspondence below is indeed appropriate and on behalf of MBIE apologise for this sort of behaviour.

The contractor concerned has been advised of the inappropriate tenor of his comments and his contract expires tomorrow. There was an expectation that the contract would be extended to Xmas but this will not be happening as a result of this behaviour.

I will personally ring [...] in next day or so to apologise

Regards

Andrew

On 22/11/2012, at 2:19 PM, 'l 1 wrote;

Hi Andrew

[...] came to me to get some advice on how to manage the email correspondence below. [...] had no desire for me to do anything with it directly. However, having read the correspondence below I felt I needed to share this with you as I do not think it is appropriate, and this needs to stop. To deliver what Ministers want we need to constructively work together.

Could we discuss.

Thanks

[...]

--

From: Aaron Gilmore
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 10:28 AM
To: [...]
Subject: RE: [...] Paper

Sure [...] its being prepared, I have other things I need to get done first.

I've worked at Treasury though I saw the light and left as a senior advisor at 24, worked with Ministers as an economic adviser in the Beehive to the MoF working on two major reform programes and was the youngest MP on the finance committee last Parliament, and made a few million as a GM in a multinational in the private sector inbetween, and took on a short term piece of contract work at MBIE to fill a time gap so I think I have a reasonable understanding of what Ministers need and what works and how Treasury should operate, through all this have never seen your approach to people and process before.

Treasury's role is a two way street. Playing games and being secrecative, withholding information and then bullying and whiteanting people when they don't do what you want is how most people see you and is what I have seen too, not as a good Treasury analytic policy maker. You have the ability to tix that.

Its not your questioning of analysis [...] I have no issue with that and indeed most of what I have said has been shown to be right once it has been debated, its some of your emotive emails which I have seen this past week or so you have sent to others which are nothing to do with analytics. I only tell you this as I am sure this sort of thing will come back to haunt you if you want your career to reach its potential.

Aaron

--

From:[...]
Sent: Friday, 16 November 2012 8:23 a.m.
To: Aaron Gilmore
Subject: Re: [...] Paper

Aaron

Further to my request yesterday for more guidance on the details you'd like to see in the [...] report - l'm surprised and sorry you feel my questioning the facts is an attempt to personally undermine you. To work effectively together we need to be able to test and challenge, in a constructive manner. To be clear, the Treasury will never avoid the facts or risks for Ministers.

We need to work out how best to work together effectively as agencies as this is essential to delivering on what Ministers need. I’ll be meeting with [...] and [...] to talk about how we best work together.

Many thanks

[...]

--

From: Aaron Gilmore
Serv: Thursday, November 15, 2012 01:17 PM
To: [...]
Subject: RE: [...] Paper

Hi [...] following the largely fruitful discussion yesterday l‘m broadly happy with the changes in new paper subject to some details that are missing, that I'm happy to provide.

Note I'm presenting a paper on an associated issue of below next week that I understand you will be attending. You can see the results and we can discuss then, unless you wish to see prior.

Further, you may want to consider your penchant firing off messages to all in sundry trying to undermine people simply because you don't agree with them and ignoring facts and reality that exposes Ministers to significant risks. Given my background and that I go back into Parliament on the Govt side in the New Year l'm happy to talk about this with you at some stage, as this behaviour is far from productive to good policy making.

Aaron

--

From: [...]
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 10:29 a.m.
To: Aaron Gilmore
Subject: RE:[...] Paper

Look forward to seeing your analysis.

--

From: Aaron Gilmore
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 10:26 a.m.
To: [...]
Subject: RE:[...] Paper

Sorry your wrong. I'll send you something that proves it.

--

From:[...]
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 10:24 a.m.
To: Aaron Gilmore
Subject: RE: [...] Paper

It’s not the figure. it’s the fact that it is not correct that [...]

[...]

--

From: Aaron Gilmore
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2012 10:07 a.m.
To: [...]
Subject: RE: [...] Paper

[...] he figure mentioned is not incorrect.

--

From:[...]
Sent: Tuesday, 13 November 2012 5:46 p.m.
To: Aaron Gilmore; [...]
Cc: [...]
Subject: RE: [...] Paper

Hi Aaron

We agreed today withl that the appropriate way forward here is for us to get together (me, [...], [...] [...] and yourself) to agree any changes we need to make to the paper. [...] and I have agreed to aim for no separate MBIE comment in the paper- ie that we work to agree what the core paper should say to the extent possible.

I think there are some problems in your comments below (eg this sentence [...] which seems incorrect), which we need to work out how to resolve for this paper.

We’|l see if we can get that done tomorrow as [...] is away Thursday and Friday.

Cheers

[...]

--

From: Aaron Gilmore
Sent: Tuesday, 13 November 2012 2:21 p.m.
To: [...]
Cc: [...]
Subject: [...] Paper

[...] - following an additional session with [...] today to discuss through most of the MBIE concerns and given some of the MBIE comments that followed our earlier comment, please see a revision for your paper. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

MBIE considers the _direction of the [...] [...]

[In conjunction with Treasurv?,] MBIE will report to you separately on the robustness of the [...] but examples of issues that need to be considered are [...] [...]

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