Labour MP Ginny Andersen received a complaint about Police Commissioner Richard Chambers while she was serving as Minister of Police, RNZ reports. The complaint came in during the final months of the Labour-led government before the October 2023 election.

RNZ also revealed that an investigation is currently underway into complaints about Chambers. Neither the details of that investigation nor the substance of Andersen's complaint have been made public.

Andersen, the Hutt South MP, took on the Police portfolio in March 2023 when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins appointed her. She had nine years of experience working for New Zealand Police before entering Parliament, giving her background in law enforcement. First elected in 2017, she has also held the Justice and Associate Justice portfolios in the Labour government.

The relationship between a Police Minister and the Commissioner sits at a careful balance: ministers cannot direct the Commissioner on how day-to-day policing operations work, but complaints about the Commissioner's own conduct are different. Those complaints can and do reach a minister's desk, and how they're handled matters.

What the reporting has not clarified is what Andersen did when she received the complaint — whether she referred it to the appropriate body, waited for more information, or otherwise dealt with it before October 2023's election. The current government under Christopher Luxon now oversees the Police portfolio. The fact that an investigation is still running suggests the matter continued across the change of government.

Andersen has a track record of raising policing issues from the Opposition benches. In February 2024 she stated in Parliament that the then Police Minister had been paid to kill people while working in private security overseas — allegations that drew attention at the time. That episode showed both her willingness to use parliamentary privilege with force and how closely she watches the Police portfolio from Opposition.

The revelation that she received a complaint about the Commissioner while in office invites a closer look at her time in that role. The key questions remain unanswered: when the complaint was made, who made it, what it alleged, and what Andersen did with it. Whether those details come out through the ongoing investigation or through parliamentary questions put to the current minister will affect how important this episode turns out to be.

For the Press Gallery, this is also a story about how institutions handle complaints about the head of New Zealand's largest law enforcement agency across a change of government. That process mostly stays out of public view, and the RNZ reporting suggests it's now attracting attention it hasn't before.