Use of social media ‘under review’ at DIA after Fred Again DJ passport debacle
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- Deputy chief executive Maria Robertson messaged UK DJ Fred Again on Instagram to tell him the department would urgently process a passport for his Kiwi opening act despite a public holiday.
- Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden ordered a review into DIA in March.
- The review shows there was no preferential treatment, but recommended changes to the DIA’s use of social media.
Isn’t this a case of the Public Service actually working and doing its job?
ACT hate it for culture war reasons simply because liberals on Twitter like this DJ and ACT are so trigger happy on using social media to launch their next culture war attack that they are in a constant state of Right Wing Outrage.
Brooke wasn’t reacting because she actually believes there is bias in the Public Service, she is reacting because redneck fuckwits on Twitter saw the communications and went into a snowflake meltdown because a DJ liberals like had some perceived help.
We know this because that’s what the OIA requests found out…
Correspondence from top-level public servants reveals Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden was reportedly “stoked” with moves to approve a young musician’s urgent passport application, despite later telling media the process wasn’t entirely ‘appropriate’.
At the end of March, Wellington-based DJ Tessa Hills, known as Messie, won a competition to join British DJ Fred Again in Australia as part of his world tour. The only problem – she didn’t have a current passport.
Fred Again posted to his 2.5 million Instagram followers pleading for assistance to help get Hills an up-to-date passport, catching the eye of a senior leader at the Department of Internal Affairs.
Deputy chief executive of service delivery and operations Maria Robertson said “a number of people” saw the post, including her son, a Fred Again fan.
Texts from Robertson, to a person who works with van Velden, whose name has been redacted under the Official Information Act, show Robertson saying the opportunity was “pretty cool”.
“I’m not sure if the Minister is a Fred Again follower but this is on his Insta for his 2.5m followers to see,” the text from Robertson said, to which the other person was pleased.
“Brilliant that is fantastic, I’ll try find an opportune time to bring it up to her [Brooke van Velden],” the response read.
The text messages describe Robertson having an “impromptu chat” with the Internal Affairs Minister.
“Min[ister] wanted to know if it was possibly a good news story. We were a step ahead,” the message said, adding “Minister was stoked” after a shaded-out redacted portion.
James reacted to the iMessage with a fist bump emoji, with many other aspects of the conversation redacted under the OIA.
…Brooke Van Velden was saying one thing privately and playing culture war bullshit publicly.
The pettiness of Brooke’s investigation alongside what she was saying privately shows how hostile ACT are to any form of Government and how open they are to throwing anyone under the bus the second their reactionary Twitter Trolls go cray over a perceived kindness to anyone they don’t like.
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The issue was public perception. It looked like favouritism when DIA is slow.
So what does that have to with Brooke Van Vampire being so two faced?
These wanker ACT types are so see through. Like that little dweeb Seymour and his woke food bs.
The hypocrisy is irrelevant. Senior public servants shouldn’t be giving advice on X. So what if ACT are hypocrites.
So should we pay their salary so they can only think after approval from the minister first? It is called the public service for a reason and if you don’t like what they do then write a new dictionary that fits your worldview.
You haven’t been a public servant by the sound of it or you would know what the problem was.
So the fact that no preferential treatment was not given means nothing? It’s rubbish to say someone being a two faced shit stirrer is irrelevant when they have been elected when supposedly standing for something.
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