A number of government websites linked to the new super ministry are offline or experiencing "performance issues", but a spokesman won't say whether the websites have been hacked.
Issues with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's (MBIE) websites, including the Companies Office website, began about 10:45am today.
A spokesman for the ministry said the sites were still operational but online transactions could not be performed.
While some webpages don't load at all, the Companies Office site loads with just the words "Hello World".
The ministry's spokesman said that was a default message "that can come up in certain situations when there are issues with a website".
"This is a standard message and is not suspicious," he said.
After requesting questions via email, the spokesman gave no response to a question about speculation the websites had been hacked.
NZN