Proactive Information Releases

Long-term Insights Briefings (LTIBs) are a new government initiative to encourage all New Zealanders to think about the future and what matters most for our long-term wellbeing. They require the public service to develop and share insights on the trends, risks and opportunities that may affect Aotearoa New Zealand. These briefings are not government policy but are an opportunity to identify and explore issues that are important for our collective future. 

The joint LTIB has been prepared by the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Justice, the Serious Fraud Office, Crown Law Office and Oranga Tamariki working through the Justice Sector Leadership Board. New Zealand Police are exempt from the requirement to produce a Long-term Insights Briefing, however they have also provided input.

Ināia Tonu Nei has worked with the Justice Sector during the development of the Long-term Insights Briefing. Ināia Tonu Nei have produced their own report drawing on the insights from the development of the briefing, A Māori view on the future risks and opportunities for imprisonment in Aotearoa.  This report presents Ināia Tonu Nei’s independent view and will be published alongside the Long-term Insights Briefing.

This first Justice Sector Briefing examines long-term insights about imprisonment with key considerations being:

• How has the prison population changed and why?
• What helps keep people away from prison?
• What are the future risks and opportunities?

The briefing is available here [PDF, 7.6 MB].

UK Government Counter Fraud Function report: Fraud Loss in the New Zealand Public Sector. December 2021.

In 2020, the Government approved additional funding to enable the SFO to lead public sector fraud prevention relating to COVID-19 relief packages. This work allowed us to establish the Counter Fraud Centre - Tauārai Hara Tāware (CFC), which was funded on a permanent basis in Budget 2022. To inform this work, we commissioned the UK Government Counter Fraud Function (UKGCFF) to undertake a desktop exercise to research the potential scale of the problem in New Zealand.

The December 2021 report, Fraud Loss in the New Zealand Public Sector, describes the international comparator methodology used by the UKGCFF to inform their findings, and the open-source materials used to derive the estimated fraud loss figures for the New Zealand public sector. Using global estimates that show loss of expenditure to fraud and error is generally in the 0.45% - 5.6% range, the UKGCFF report found the New Zealand public sector’s loss in 2020 could have been between $601 million (0.45%) to $7.48 billion (5.6%). When tax fraud estimates were included, this range was refined to between $5.37 and $10.37 billion, caveated that the certainty of this range was lower. As noted in the report, fraud is a hidden crime and this results in a level of uncertainty when estimating fraud levels.

New Zealand is a country with low rates of reported fraud and corruption and is consistently ranked in the top three on the Transparency International Corruptions Perceptions Index, however there is no room for complacency. Since the UKGCFF report was commissioned, we have taken significant steps to further strengthen New Zealand’s response to fraud and corruption. This includes the permanent establishment of the Counter Fraud Centre, expansion of the Counter Fraud Community of Practice, and progress towards a National Counter Fraud and Corruption Strategy. Part of the CFC’s work moving forward will be to establish a clearer picture of fraud loss in New Zealand. 

The report is available here [PDF, 543 KB].