Five years of salary, zero days of work
Russell Harrison, a former Lotto presenter, started as a Family Court navigator in Rotorua in June 2021 and was arrested that same month in a global FBI sting targeting organised crime. He was suspended on full pay, and stayed suspended, collecting his government salary, for the entire five years until he pleaded guilty to money laundering in August 2026.
The bill to taxpayers was well over half a million dollars, possibly as much as $564,000. He did not work a single day for it. And here is the detail that should make every business owner reading this grind their teeth: Harrison will not have to repay a cent.
The excuse that doesn’t survive contact with employment law
Ministry of Justice acting COO Andrea King offered the official line: because Harrison was in law innocent until proven guilty, a decision on termination needed to wait until the charge was resolved.
That is simply wrong. As Heather du Plessis-Allan reported after consulting an employment lawyer, employers do not need to wait for a court verdict. They can run their own investigation and dismiss on the balance of available evidence. The criminal standard applies in a criminal court, not in an employment relationship. Most private employers would reach a decision within two or three months.
The ministry knew this. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith confirmed the agency had received legal advice that it could have terminated Harrison earlier and chose not to act on it. This was not confusion about the law. It was a decision to sit on the problem for five years.
It’s not just one man
The more alarming detail sits underneath the headline. The Taxpayers Union revealed, from documents it obtained, that four other Ministry of Justice employees are currently on leave while facing charges or misconduct investigations. Harrison is not an aberration. He is the case that happened to reach a courtroom.
Jordan Williams, executive director of the Taxpayers Union, argued this reflects a culture where agencies don’t worry about costs because taxpayers are footing the bill. The HR department would have known about these arrangements. This is not ignorance. It is a choice enabled by the absence of anyone who feels the cost.
The accountability asymmetry
Du Plessis-Allan put the contrast plainly. Which employer in the real world would keep you on full pay for five years after you’re charged? No one. For a private business, absorbing five years of salary for a non-working employee facing organised-crime charges would be a catastrophic governance failure with direct board and shareholder consequences. Someone would lose their job over it.
The ministry faced no such pressure. The perceived risk of a wrongful-dismissal claim, one that would almost certainly have failed given the gravity of the charges and the ministry’s own legal advice, was treated as scarier than years of salary leakage. That is the asymmetry at the heart of this. When you don’t own the money, the safe option is always to do nothing.
What happens next
Goldsmith has not been mealy-mouthed. He called the situation utterly unacceptable and a comedy of errors, and said flatly that paying somebody for five years for not working cannot be justified. He learned of the whole thing only in the two weeks before it became public; the ministry never told him.
He has now ordered a rapid four-to-six-week review of the ministry’s operations, and directed all public service chief executives to manage employment cases involving criminal proceedings properly. Justice Secretary Andrew Kibblewhite has apologised.
Goldsmith framed the standard exactly right: New Zealanders expect the public service to work through difficult employment matters as business owners across the country do daily. Business owners do it because there is a cost to getting it wrong. Until public agencies feel a comparable cost, the reviews will keep coming, and so will the cases nobody bothered to close.
Sources
- Justice Ministry to be reviewed, as minister’s confidence in agency ‘seriously shaken’ (2026-08-05)
- Criminal paid $500,000 for a government job he barely worked in – and he won’t have to pay it back (2026-08-05)
- Russell Harrison: Ministry of Justice under review, boss apologises over ‘utterly unacceptable’ saga (2026-08-05)
- Paul Goldsmith demands answers after ex-Lotto presenter gets taxpayer-funded wage for five years on gardening leave (2026-08-05)
- Ex-Lotto presenter pay saga ‘wouldn’t be tolerated’ in private sector – Taxpayers Union (2026-08-06)
- Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: What real employer would do what the Ministry of Justice did? (2026-07-03)
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