Why Nick Smith did not have to resign

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Michael Laws

One of the best (or worst) things about New Zealand politics is that we judge our parliamentary representatives through a different prism than we judge ourselves. Despite our daily chastisement of their morals, motives and mendacity, we expect our MPs to be the paragons of moral virtue that we are not. This is because we wrongly believe they have an unparalleled influence over our daily lives.
In fact, most politicians are powerless. Including most cabinet ministers and party leaders. They are merely the front dressing for a legion of faceless folk – policy staff, civil servants, lobbyists and parliamentary staff – who shape their champions on a daily basis.
It has long been a proposition of mine that there is only one political party and they are always in power: the bureaucracy. The average middle manager in any government department's policy unit has more influence over our daily lives than the average MP. The role of most of our elected representatives is merely to entertain.
The debating chamber is a literal circus and the press gallery little more than a Greek chorus. They are easily distracted from the substance of reform and change in this country, and the Nick Smith affair this past week stands as Exhibit No964 that this distraction always works, because to describe the Smith/Bronwyn Pullar affair as petty is to do the word an injustice.
But let's start with Winston Peters' allegations – picked up by any number of mentally addled bloggers (is there any other type?) – that this was all really some sordid love affair gone wrong. It was an allegation that had neither substance nor relevance.
In fact when I put it to Peters on my Radio Live show this past week, the NZ First leader backtracked at a spectacular rate of knots. He had used the word "sex" in the House, because a number of the ACC claimants who had had their details mistakenly released to Ms Pullar, were rape victims. And rape involves sex.
Mr Peters now wants an independent inquiry into this non-scandal because it might prove there really was a scandal. Or not. And we need to know that, he emphatically argued.
Ironically, the person who would benefit best from an inquiry would be Nick Smith. Which is precisely why Prime Minister John Key can't have one. Smith would at least discover who had access to the so-called incriminating letter, and who was most likely to have released it.
At this point in time, ACC stand as most likely to gain from such revelations. They could bat off Pullar's assertions of widespread calumny and distract from their own incompetence in releasing the details of other claimants. And bureaucrats play such games on a regular basis. It is their dark art.
The letter that led to Smith's downfall is incredibly innocuous. It simply states a truth. Bronwyn Pullar is a changed woman since her bicycle accident some decade ago. Nick Smith knows this because he knew her before and after. In the letter he also points out – openly and honestly – Pullar's political connections. And then states and restates that it would be inappropriate to act on her behalf or intervene with any ACC decision. Just that Bronwyn Pullar is not the woman she was.
Apparently the crime is that he stated such on a ministerial letterhead. Oh, whoopdie-do. He played absolutely no role in the decision regarding her claim and had no intention of taking one. Rather, he appears to have written the letter out of sheer frustration that a friend kept bedevilling him for an intervention he could not make.
The "discovery" of the second letter was, of course, irrelevant. It was just the hook required for John Key's advisers to reconsider the potential embarrassment of the prime minister's original defence of Smith's actions.
In retrospect, the inquiry – quick and immediate – would have been the way to go. Key should have suspended Smith ahead of that outcome. Any investigation would have found that Smith's actions carried no weight with ACC.
Ironically, that's the part that I find the most disturbing. That ministers cannot control nor guide nor even influence their own department. Especially when they are wrong. At that point, just employ some nodding nincompoop and use them as an automatic signature machine, which is what most ministers, not so coincidentally, really are.
Yes you might argue that there was a technical breach of the Cabinet Manual. But there are technical breaches of the law every day in this country, and the police choose not to prosecute nor even investigate. In this case, the consequences far outweighed the calumny. But don't we feel virtuous?

© 2012 Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/columnists/6631324/Why-Nick-Smith-did-not-have-to-resign