In fairness, though, it was a great jab and deserved the coverage it got.

The PRA in a nutshell boils down to three key things: 1. Public agencies are required to create and maintain full and accurate records. 2. They have to maintain these in accessible form for as long as required, and 3. That those records can only be disposed (either via destruction or transfer to Archives NZ) with the approval of the Chief Archivist. The question in this case though, as Mathew Hooten indicates, is whether the Act is in play. If it is, then prima facie it's a pretty obvious breach. Incidentally, for my 2 cents, the PRA and OIA are two sides of the whole. In an ideal world, Archives NZ should be extricated from DIA, and report to Parliament to preserve its independence and ability to investigate, a la Office of the Ombudsman and Privacy Commissioner.

So, three things: 1. Long time lurker, first time caller: please be gentle. 2. The dirty politics revelations have illustrated, I think, a wider malaise/hubris within this government, which is that convention, process, the Cabinet Manual and all those other things that we take for granted to keep NZ politics clean(ish) and not vitriolic and hyperpartisan like the States, have been merily abandoned: other examples that spring to mind are Paula Bennett blithely exposing individuals' personal privacy for political purposes, Nick Smith thinking nothing of using his ministerial letterhead for similar purposes, the removal of Ecan etc... etc... and 3: it's about now presumably that Collins (and hopefully Key) is busily recognising that metadata is actually kinda intrinsically related to the content it describes, and that its collection and use for investigative purposes is actually something to be concerned about.