By Dan Parker
Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne has hit back at claims he deliberately suppressed a public survey which showed strong anti-alcohol sentiment.
While he declined an interview when 3 News broke the story last night, Mr Dunne now says his political opponents are making malicious accusations and he thought the information was already in the public domain.
Many papers, reports and surveys come across Mr Dunne's desk - some make it past, others are binned.
But he says he never tried to deliberately suppress a survey about attitudes towards alcohol.
“That's simply a lie. I have covered up nothing because I’m in no position to cover it up,” he says. “I'm not responsible for the report. I don't have responsibility for the Health Sponsorship Council. I can't tell them what to do or what not to do.”
At the Ministry of Health's request, the Health Sponsorship Council included nine questions about alcohol in a survey of 1700 New Zealanders.
An overwhelming majority supported increased restrictions around sales and consumption.
“The advice I had at the time was that it paralleled a lot of information that was already known to us anyway,” says Mr Dunne.
Labour says not releasing the survey results smacks of a cover up, while addiction specialist Doug Sellman says the information could have influenced further change.
“The Prime Minister said around the time of the survey results were available that the country was in no mood for change.”
Regardless, last year the Government adopted 126 of the 153 recommendations made by the Law Commission for alcohol reform.
And Mr Dunne says he did not take the survey further in order save the Ministry $10,000.
“Given that they then went and had it peer reviewed, and given that they then still presumably retained the data, what use they made of it was entirely their own responsibility,” he says. “Why they didn't produce it publicly on their website, as I had anticipated they would, is something they need to answer not me.”
While the Health Sponsorship Council declined to be interviewed, a spokesman told 3 News it was not the council's responsibility to publish the survey.
3 News