29 August 2024
Erika Whittome
[FYI request #27326 email]
Tēnā koe Erika,
Your request for official information, reference: HNZ00059107 (Follow up)
Following our response dated 30 July 2024 to your earlier request, thank you for your (follow up)
email on 2 August 2024, asking Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora for the following under the
Of icial Information Act 1982 (the Act):
Your response says: " I am, however, able to advise that Health NZ has not paid influencers
or sports figures to promote COVID-19 vaccination since July 2022."
The date of the Youtube advert in my official request for information is 14 October 2021 not
July 2022. I see the Highlanders Rugby Team feature in an advert posted on Youtube here
(https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2F
watch%3Fv%3DJA135A0xMVg&data=05%7C02%7Csm_HNZOIA%40tewhatuora.govt.nz%7
Cc32b0b037cdb42ee24b908dc9239ae7b%7Cbed4da513cdb4d0dbaf8fb80d53268e3%7C0%
7C0%7C638546024546252446%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiL
CJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C40000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=9S2
CMWN1AZDQGefr%2FcTz%2BXv3M7R2QU7%2BAOGMwV8kbxk%3D&reserved=0 )
Your response also says:
"The information you are seeking regarding promotion of COVID-19 vaccination is not held by
the (former) Southern District Health Board but would need to be created in order to respond
to your request. I am therefore refusing your request under section 18(g) of the Act, because
Health NZ Southern does not hold any official information."
This is il ogical because information is not created. It is held and stored.
Health NZ is the merged agency all the DHBs as of June 2022. Al the existing systems and
finances at Southern DHB are stil in place. This information request is not to "Health NZ
Southern". It is to Health NZ.
Response
Unfortunately, the requested information is not held in a centralised location. This means that
providing a response to your request would rrequire us to divert a significant amount of time and
resources to extract all the account codes from late 2020 to June 2022 by transaction for each
former district. Each transaction would then need to be manually reviewed by many dif erent areas
across Health NZ to determine what the purpose was. As such, we refuse your request under
section 18(f) of the Act as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial
collation or research.
Please note, we have considered whether fixing a charge for the supply of the information or
extending the timeframe for response would enable Health NZ to respond; however, we do not
consider that either option would remove the impact that supplying the information would have on
our other operations.
How to get in touch
If you have any questions, you can contact us at
[email address].
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
by phoning 0800 802 602.
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public, Health NZ may proactively
release a copy of this response on our website. Al requester data, including your name and
contact details, wil be removed prior to release.
Nāku iti noa, nā
pp Auxilia Nyangoni
Richard Aldous
Acting Chief Financial Officer
Finance
