Who polices the Police Minister?
- Grant McLachlan
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
Mark Mitchell built a career on the cosy traffic between cops and a political party. Now he is shocked — shocked — that Labour has done the same.
On Monday, Labour confirmed police superintendent Rakesh Naidoo as its number 13 list candidate — a ranking high enough to all but guarantee him a seat above sitting MPs. Police Minister Mark Mitchell promptly declared himself “particularly disappointed” that Naidoo had sat in sensitive briefings on public safety and government policy while contemplating a run for the other side.
It is a fair point about disclosure. It is also a remarkable one to hear from this minister. Because no one in New Zealand politics has worked the seam between the police and a political party harder, or longer, than Mark Mitchell.
So why is the loudest voice for police neutrality a man who has spent two decades blurring the line himself?
Contents
A family trade
Mitchell is a former police dog handler, not a product of the senior ranks he now commands as minister.
Mitchell was no certainty in Rodney, either: he won the National nomination only after strategists Cameron Slater and Simon Lusk — later of Dirty Politics notoriety — talked up his police credentials and worked to undermine his rivals. He was sold to voters as a “celebrity cop”, and his grandfather, Frank Gill, was Muldoon’s Minister of Police.
Mitchell knows exactly how potent a police badge is on the hustings. He built a seat on one.
His own ascent was unhurried. He entered Parliament ranked 59th on National’s list in 2011, climbing to 42nd in 2014, 21st in 2017 and 15th in 2020, before reaching 11th in 2023.
A police superintendent walking straight onto Labour’s list at 13 outranks where Mitchell sat for most of his career — a slight that may bruise more than any breach of protocol.
A first-time candidate has walked onto Labour’s list at number 13 — higher than Mark Mitchell managed in any of his first four elections.
The wrong team
In opposition, Mitchell hammered Labour’s police ministers over the politicisation of the Commissioner, attacking Stuart Nash for treating Andrew Coster as a “mate” and insisting the minister–Commissioner relationship be kept “professional.”
As minister, Mitchell saw Coster out early and installed Richard Chambers.
Former Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura — the first woman appointed to the role — says Mitchell and Chambers “threw us under the bus for their own political gain” over the McSkimming affair, with Mitchell branding the old executive “corrupt” before retracting the word.
Jevon McSkimming, the man parts of that executive were accused of shielding, has since pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material.
The minister who demanded neutrality, it turns out, wanted a leadership team of his own. He may simply have assumed a senior cop like Naidoo was on it.
Everybody does it
Consider National’s own revolving door.
Christopher Luxon ran Air New Zealand before he ran the country. Sir John Key joined the airline’s board after the Beehive. Air New Zealand’s “head of government and industry affairs” has been held by Phil de Joux, a former deputy chief of staff to the Prime Minister, and by Duncan Small — now the husband of Finance Minister Nicola Willis.
State-linked boardrooms and ministerial offices swap staff constantly. Nobody calls it a scandal when the traffic flows National’s way.
The cops who became MPs
And police in Parliament?
Clem Simich, a former detective sergeant, replaced Muldoon in Tamaki and went on to serve as National’s Minister of Police.
Ross Meurant commanded the Police “Red Squad” through the 1981 Springbok Tour, then sat as a National MP — his maiden speech naming activists from the floor of the House.
The badge-to-Beehive pipeline has, if anything, run more heavily through National than Labour.
Yet when Labour’s Ginny Andersen — a former police staffer married to a serving officer — became Police Minister, and when long-serving Police Association president Greg O’Connor became a Labour MP, National did not call either a threat to neutrality.
New Zealand First’s people
Then there is Wally Haumaha.
Appointed Deputy Commissioner in 2018, he had earlier sought a New Zealand First candidacy; Winston Peters, as acting Prime Minister, announced the inquiry into his appointment, having previously spoken at a marae celebrating his promotion, while a New Zealand First minister administered the review.
The process was duly cleared as “adequate and fit for purpose.” National’s own front bench attacked that appointment at the time.
A politically connected officer, it seems, is a crisis — right up until he is connected to your own side of the House.
And the government now demanding Naidoo’s neutrality has one of its own.
Casey Costello, an Associate Minister of Police, is a
Former detective sergeant and Police Association vice-president;
Former Act candidate;
Co-founded the anti-co-governance lobby group Hobson’s Pledge with Don Brash; and
Chaired the Taxpayers’ Union — co-founded by Jordan Williams, a central figure in Dirty Politics.
As Associate Minister of Health she was later found by the Chief Ombudsman to have withheld tobacco-policy documents in a manner that was “unreasonable and contrary to law”, and was ordered to apologise and release them. Yet nobody in this Cabinet calls her a threat to police neutrality.
Mitchell’s real complaint is not that policing and politics have become entangled. He helped tie the knot. It is that, this time, the cop crossed to the wrong team.
