Gliding on (2026?) Minister's edition.

Kia ora me (from me),

Quick note from your Internal Affairs desk to your Workplace Relations desk - we need to talk about this morning's OIA masterpiece to Paul Thistoll.

"Minister van Velden has decided to grant your request, however..." is absolute poetry! It's like announcing "I've decided to make you dinner" while the kitchen's on fire and the supermarket's closed. Schrödinger's transparency: the documents simultaneously exist and don't exist until observed (spoiler alert: quantum physics says they're hiding).

I'm genuinely curious about these mysterious "consultations" happening on Day 40 of a 40-day deadline. Are we consulting the Oracle at Delphi? My horoscope? The office pot plant? Because if we're still consulting, then technically we haven't made the decision we just said we made, which is a philosophical paradox worthy of its own briefing paper.

Look, as your Internal Affairs self, I'm concerned. The OIA isn't meant to be performance art, though I appreciate the avant-garde approach which outdoes even Stockhausen's Helikopter-Streichquartett for Four Helicopters and String Quartet. Maybe we could try a radical new strategy: if we've decided yes, we release things. If we haven't decided, we... don't say we have?

Wild concept, I know.

Ngā mihi from one Brooke to another,

Brooke van Velden
Minister for Internal Affairs
(Definitely not the same Brooke who just invented time travel to grant-but-not-grant OIA requests)

P.S. The Official Information Act called - it's considering therapy.