Cabinet Minister Nick Smith has resigned for intervening in his friend and National Party activist Bronwyn Pullar's ACC claim while he was ACC Minister last year.© 2012 APN Holdings NZ Ltd
Dr Smith announced his resignation in Parliament this afternoon following mounting pressure from Opposition parties as speculation grew over the exact nature of his relationship with Ms Pullar who he first met in the 1990s.
Dr Smith was Local Government, Environment and Climate Change minister.
Ms Pullar is the former National Party activist who was accidentally sent information about 6700 other ACC claimants, including data which identified some as making "sensitive claims" for injuries resulting from rape or other forms of sexual assault.
In his July 2011 letter on ministerial letterhead, Dr Smith offers his view that Ms Pullar was a capable dynamic woman before the 2002 bicycle accident in which she suffered head injuries.
He has said Mr Pullar had been pressuring him to help with her ACC claim since he became ACC Minister in 2008.
Speculation about Dr Smith's relationship with Ms Pullar was fuelled by NZ First Leader Winston Peters during a rare snap debate held on Ms Pullar's ACC privacy breach yesterday when he described the furore as "a shabby little case involving blackmail, sex, a minister with a conflict of interest".
Dr Smith is the third minister in Mr Key's Government to lose their portfolios for misuse of their position or improper conduct. Internal Affairs Minister Richard Worth lost his job in 2009 following a sex scandal while Ethnic Affairs Minister Pansy Wong resigned after the Auditor General found she and her husband misused ministerial travel funding.
A fourth minister, former Fisheries Minister Phil Heatley lost his portfolio in early 2010 for misusing his ministerial credit card but was later reinstated following an investigation by the Auditor General.
Earlier today, Mr Key was backing Dr Smith, maintaining that Dr Smith's July 2011 letter on ministerial letterhead was lapse of judgement but not a serious matter.
Mr Key was refusing to comment on speculation about the exact nature of Dr Smith and Ms Pullar's relationship but said he was satisfied with Dr Smith's account of events.
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