Former National Party president Michelle Boag has angrily dismissed suggestions she leaked the email she sent to ACC Minister Judith Collins about her friend Bronwyn Pullar's controversial meeting with ACC managers.
Opposition parties yesterday continued their calls for an independent inquiry into events around Ms Pullar's use of National Party connections to advance her ACC claim.
A week ago the affair cost former ACC Minister Nick Smith his Cabinet position and the focus has moved on to how Ms Boag's email to Ms Collins reached the Herald on Sunday, whose subsequent report outed Ms Pullar as the woman at the centre of the ACC privacy breach.
Facing questions from the Opposition yesterday, Ms Collins told Parliament she was "100 per cent certain'' neither she nor anyone in her office had passed the email to the Herald On Sunday.
Earlier, she said she had called ACC chairman John Judge to her office on Monday and he had assured her he did not leak the information. ACC chief executive Ralph Stewart has also denied leaking the email.
Ms Collins, who says she only passed the email to Mr Judge and Mr Stewart, went on to say: "The fact is it also came from Ms Boag, so there are possibilities.''
However, Ms Boag reacted angrily to any suggestion she had leaked her own email. "I sent it to the minister only ... and I asked whether it was a secure email address before I sent it.''
She said the email was sent to Ms Collins in the expectation it would not be sent to anyone else.
"When you can't send a communication to a Government minister without fearing that the privacy of that communication is going to be breached, that's very, very dangerous.''
- Adam Bennett, NZ Herald
