Strypey#NZLabour government Ministers have learned from their predecessors, and avoid directly answering questions from journalists by regurgitating key messages crafted by a PR team. The PM is a master of 'repeat it until they go away' and Megan Wood was sticking to her key messages about Southern Response's use of corporate spies Thompson and Clark.
This is not the first time Thompson and Clark have been used by state-owned enterprises to spy on activists whose activities might threaten their bottom line. During the last Labour government, Solid Energy (then state-owned) contacted T&C to spy on the anti-coal mine coalition Save Happy Valley (which I was part of), and a number of other groups that shared members, as revealed by Investigative journalist #NickyHagar in the Sunday Star Times.
The Clark Labour government defended the practice at the time, claiming Solid Energy's use of T&C was about protecting the safety of West Coast coal miners from a bunch of idealistic hippies, firmly committed to nonviolent direct action #YeahRight. So now Megan Wood has to defend the practice in general, because otherwise the Opposition will quite rightly call Labour hypocrites, while claiming it was wrong in this case because it "morphed into brand protection", not staff protection.
The only reason Thompson and Clark's business exists is for brand protection, and maybe profit protection. If companies have genuine concerns about protecting staff, that's what the Police are there for. Megan Wood's refusal to condemn these uses of T&C means publicly-owned companies will use them again under this government, and may be doing it right now.