Kiwiblog

I’m interested in three things:

1. What will the turnout be
2. Will Shearer’s majority be larger than Clark’s or not?
3. Will Russel Norman manage to steal second?

Should have the advance votes soon for an indication.

Advance votes are in and Shearer has 1,435 and Lee has 456, In 2008 they were 1,388 and 791 so if turnout is the same that would project a 12,500 majority. But only two booths in so far.

Six booths in and Shearer has a 3:1 lead – as the polls predicted. He has a 1,558 majority so far and only 3,658 votes counted. He could well beat Clark’s majority.

Only five booths and specials to go and Shearer has 62% of the vote and a majority of 6,534 and growing. Whether he beats Clark depends on turnout.

Assuming there is a power supply, I hope to blog the results tonight.

The official results will be here.

I have done a little spreadsheet that, if it works, will allow me to predict the likely majority based on some of the early booths.

I know they are adults but grossness in this story from Marlborough Express:

A Blenheim father facing five charges of sexually assaulting his adult daughter has been found not guilty on all charges this afternoon. …

The jury of six men and six women had listened to evidence for a day and a half, hearing details of the incident on August 7 last year when the complainant, then 31, had joined other family members at the accused’s house. His wife had gone to hospital after being unwell for a few weeks.

Alcohol was drunk by some of the people in the house that night, including the complainant. In the early hours of the morning, make-shift sleeping arrangements for everyone were organised and the accused invited the complainant and her small son to share a queen-sized bed with him.

Describing what happened next, defence lawyer Rob Harrison told the jury: ”It was inappropriate and it was wrong but it was not rape.”

He said the combined affects of the complainant’s inebriation and the accused’s trauma and lack of sleep over several weeks while looking after his wife, whose condition was then considered as possibly terminal, resulted in the usual barriers breaking down between father and daughter.

What a euphemism – “the usual barriers”.

And while one accepts the court decision it was not rape, I wonder if incest charges were considered?

The part that really grossed me out was this:

When sober the next morning, the complainant realised the horror of what had happened and made contact with Women’s Refuge, a doctor and the police. The accused, however, was still feeling comforted by what had occurred in the bed, sent text and voice messages to her cell phone. In one he said: ”Come over so we can do what we did this morning.”

Bad enough to sleep with your (adult) daughter. But to text her the next day asking for a repeat performance – yuck yuck yuck.

The Dom Post reports:

Millions of dollars and thousands of jobs will disappear from the Auckland economy when the super-city becomes a reality, an economics consultant says. …

Unifying Auckland local government should shed between 539 and 817 council staff. That, along with centralised purchasing from suppliers, should save the super-city council $181 million a year compared with what the present eight councils spend, said Auckland University public economics teacher Rhema Vaithianathan.

Now putting aside the fact most ratepayers will be delighted at savings of $181 million a year, shouldn’t the story have made clear this research was commissioned by the Labour Party? And should it not also have been made clear that the “economics teacher” is not just a member of the Labour Party but stood for the Mt Albert nomination just a few weeks ago?

This doesn’t mean her work is wrong – but the media should be upfront about this, when it is in such a subjective area such as economic modelling.

Sunday News covers this initiative by PETA to convince people to swap to a plant based diet.

One can only wish them luck.

Fran O’Sullivan says the allegations that Richard Worth promised appointments for “favours” were so serious they should have gone to an inquiry.

Key should not be allowed to get away with ducking his own basic democratic responsibility to ensure a “favours for jobs” allegation that casts doubt on the integrity of his Government is tested.

Mrs Choudary could always file a complaint with the Police, as I suggested, as what she alleges is a crime under s107(1) if the Crimes Act

Corruption and bribery of Minister of the Crown

(1) Every Minister of the Crown or member of the Executive Council is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years who corruptly accepts or obtains, or agrees or offers to accept or attempts to obtain, any bribe for himself or any other person in respect of any act done or omitted, or to be done or omitted, by him in his capacity as a Minister or member of the Executive Council.

Maybe Phil can help her with the complaint.

No one emerges from this affair unscathed. In Goff’s case, his campaign looks decidedly shabby. First, another senior Labour Party official identified Choudary by leaking telling details about her. Then, secondly, right-wing bloggers chipped in with revelations about the immigration scams her husband, Kumar, orchestrated.

Toss in the additional factor that one of Kumar Choudary’s victims alleges he has since been offered a $15,000 hush payment by associates to shut up about the pair and this whole episode is starting to take on very serious connotations.

The reality is that Goff tabled no real evidence to support his allegation that Worth tried to entice the “strikingly beautiful” Choudary (Goff’s description, not Worth’s) with the offer of a job on the Lottery Grants Board. Even the allegedly saucy texts that have been published by the Labour leader give the appearance of little more than an obsession.

They are not sexually explicit. They do not corroborate the most serious allegation against Worth – that he was prepared to use political patronage for favours.

Fran also criticises Key:

After Key’s own ham-fisted announcement of Worth’s ministerial “resignation”, the MP was subjected to a ceaseless barrage of innuendo from both Goff and Key as they shamelessly plumbed Worth’s peccadilloes for their respective political advantage.

Both political leaders need to grow up. New Zealand is surely not Malaysia, where a political opponent (or even a former colleague) can be drummed out of Parliament or jailed without a fair go. Or is it?

List MPs can be – they basically serve at a party’s pleasure. Electorate MPs are very different.

The Herald editorial:

It was once something of a common fallacy that juries got to hear every piece of evidence before reaching their verdict. Now, in increasingly startling circumstances, we know that routinely they do not. What they hear is the product of pre-trial hearings as the prosecution and the defence seek to tilt the balance of the pending courtroom proceedings in their favour. What jurors are told, and what they are not, can have a strong influence on their thinking. In that light, it is relatively unsurprising that two juries considering the case of David Bain arrived at different conclusions. And when material withheld from a jury is later made public, it is totally unsurprising that there will be widespread unease.

On the plus side, it also gives us lots of Tui bilboards!

The courts’ willingness to suppress certain evidence suggests an implicit mistrust of jury members’ acumen. Yet there is an essential contradiction in this approach. Juries are entrusted to assess a large amount of evidence about often complex or technical issues. Often, as in the 12-week sitting of the Bain retrial, this will involve dissecting the widely differing views of forensic and pathology experts. But the jury was not allowed to hear the school friend’s allegation of a “rape” plan because the Court of Appeal ruled it was too prejudicial against Mr Bain. Likewise, that jury was not trusted to assess the 111 call.

I very much weigh on the side of trust the jury. I would even let them know of previous offending – in an Internet age it is hard to keep this information secret anyway, and I say it is better to give the jury all teh info, but have a Judge explain what is and is not relevant.

After the retrial verdict, Chief Justice Elias said it would be “an extraordinary step” for the court to now keep its reasons for making any decision secret. She is right about that, but the consequence of a jury not fully in the picture is a public making its own judgment. Heavy lashings of suppression have produced a strong dose of distortion. Far better that juries hear every scrap of evidence and be trusted to reach the right decision.

I agree.

Please avoid discussing the by-election candidates or what you think will be the outcome, until after 7 pm.

then piss off and don’t read this blog until after 7 pm!

Thank You.

Details to follow.

First reaction – Cam Calder effectively becomes a Member of Parliament tomorrow – as he would have if Melissa wins the by-election. So how is that for gettign there through the unlikely route?

Martin Kay at the Dom Post has the story.

This is a very good outcome for both Richard and National. Richard would have been miserable on the backbenches, and it allows National to avoid having to deal with the issue.

I have been e-mailed his statement:

Friday, June 12, 2009

Statement by Dr Richard Worth

“Since I resigned as a Cabinet Minister earlier this month, I have been considering my personal options, and also the welfare of the National Party – a party which I love and have served to the best of my ability for the past nine years.

“As a result, I have today also resigned as a list Member of Parliament with immediate effect.

“It would be easy for me to be bitter about the avalanche of rumour and innuendo that has led me into making this decision which I regard as being in the best interests of my party.

“I wish only to restate that I have not committed any crime, and I remain confident that when the true facts are established I will be cleared of any and all allegations of criminal conduct. I will steadfastly defend myself in respect of those allegations.

But it is impossible to defend oneself in the public and political arena against hearsay, character assassination and scuttlebutt.

“Like most of us, if we are honest, I may at times during my life have said and done things which, when analysed in the cold light of day, may seem to have been unwise. As I said last week, like any other citizen I am entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

“I could spend the future bemoaning the unfairness of a campaign which has Labour’s fingerprints all over it. But that is not my nature. The campaign has been run against me by people who are unable or unwilling to back their claims with credible evidence of criminal activity.

“I went into politics to make a contribution to New Zealand. I can see that it is no longer possible for me to do that through politics, so I am now choosing to follow another positive path.

“Helping New Zealand win international trade will be the focus of my future activities. I believe I may make a greater contribution through my business activities than by attempting to remain in politics in what would clearly be an untenable position, and hoping to be forgiven for things of which I am innocent.

“My conscience is clear. Those who have chosen to try to ruin my reputation should perhaps now examine theirs.

“My wife and family stand behind me in this decision, as they have stood by me, together with our friends, in the past difficult weeks. Their loyalty and love has been a timely reminder for me about what is truly important in life.

This whole episode has taken a toll on me personally, and this is why I have made myself unavailable to the media and will continue to do so. I would ask that media now respect my right to privacy and allow me to get on with my life.

“That is all I wish to say. I am moving forward on a new path”.

Richard will get a lot of kudos for his decision, which is well timed, and for his loyalty. Also his apparent lack of rancour.

Having known Richard for a decade, somewhat sad at his leaving in this fashion, but it was the right decision. Also my thoughts are with his family, for which this must have been very tough.

John Key has now commented:

Prime Minister John Key says Dr Richard Worth’s resignation from Caucus and Parliament is a sensible course of action in the circumstances.

“I was notified this afternoon of Dr Worth’s intention to resign from Parliament. I believe this to be a sensible course of action,” says Mr Key.

“The decision gives the country an opportunity to move forward and focus on the issues that matter. There are important challenges facing New Zealand, and they will continue to have the Government’s full attention.

“Auckland’s Cam Calder is next on the party list. We look forward to welcoming him as a new Member of Parliament for National.”

The next candidate on the list after Cam Calder is Conway Powell. I hope he won’t be called up for a while

On Wednesday evening at Backbenches various Young Labour members were very excited, telling everyone who would listen that Melissa Lee had parked her car on a disabled parking spot.

This was then given more publicity by Trevor Mallard who blogged at Red Alert:

Melissa in Disabled Park?

Just stupid. Can two days pass without her cocking up?

Remember she is John Key’s handpicked candidate.

Both lack judgement.

The post has now been struck through. Why?

Well Melissa did not park there. She took a taxi to Backbenches. The car was a supporter’s car. The supporter is disabled and had his disability card displayed in the windscreen – something that anyone could have easily checked. Egg. Face. Ouch.

The comments thread at Red Alert is quite amusing and worth a read.

John Armstrong writes:

You know it is a cold day in hell when Phil Goff declines an invitation to speak on the radio.

Few politicians more overtly hunger for media coverage than the Labour leader. So Goff’s no-show on yesterday’s Morning Report has to be seen as an admission that the Richard Worth affair has ended up biting him.

The week started with Key very much on the back foot, so it reminds us how apt that saying about how long a week is in politics is.

Goff essentially used Choudary as a vehicle to attack Key. That would have been fine had Choudary’s identity not become public. But it was inevitable it would. Goff’s case was undermined by the huge discrepancy between the image he painted of Choudary and the reality.

He intimated she was some low-level Labour Party member who had become confused and traumatised by Worth’s alleged advances. The actual person is highly active in the party with enough self-confidence to seek nomination to become a candidate for Parliament and tell Worth firmly where to go.

Armstrong is not the only journalist who thinks that Goff painted a misleading picture of Choudary.

It is that disjunction which belies Goff’s claim to have been “totally upfront”. Quite why he thought the gap between image and reality was not a problem will be severely taxing the minds of his colleagues.

And Key actually made a couple of stupid mistakes which should have allowed this to be a clear victory for Labour – but Goff blundered.

Meanwhile, questions have been mounting about why, if Goff was alarmed by Worth’s alleged behaviour, it took him so long to alert the Prime Minister to what Worth was doing.

Also why Choudary talked to Goff long before Choudary says the texts turned allegedly inappropriate.

None of this absolves Worth.

Absolutely.  Even if it was a “honey trap” (and personally I am not convinced it was – mainly because it was so incompetently managed), one should know better than to fall for it.

A properly functioning democracy would see such allegations put in front of an independent inquiry post haste. That is where Goff should have focused his attention.

Well the allegation that Worth promised board appointments in exchange for a relationship is arguably a criminal act – the same sort of act that Taito Philip Field is in court for.

Goff and Choudary could take their allegations to the Police to have them fully investigated. The Police may be able to retrieve the deleted text messages.

TV3 last night reported:

Last December Neelam Choudary’s husband, Kumar Choudary, was convicted for his role in an immigration scam.

Today one of his victims told 3 News most of his dealings were in fact with Neelam and that the Choudarys have ruined his life.

Siddesh Sajjan says the Choudarys are dangerous people and he is concerned for his safety.

That is why he does not want to be identified.

They named him, but did not show his face.

He also says his dealings with the Choudarys left him in the darkest place of his life.

“I was very upset and I was in such terrible pain,” says immigration scam victim Siddesh Sajjan.

Sajjan first met with Neelam Choudary in 2002 when she had advertised herself as a recruitment agent and immigration specialist.

“She’s the one who started it,” says Sajjan. “Then later on she tried to skip out of it and she involved her husband into this matter.”

One year on the Choudarys charged Sajjan $15,000 in fees with the promise of an offer of employment and help with immigration.

None of the promises came through.

“She will do anything for money, for fame,” says Sajjan.

Mrs Choudary was not charged, but her husband has been convicted for the fraud. His sentence is at this stage, unknown.

People representing the Choudarys contacted Sajjan this morning.

“They said that if I stop talking about her, they wanted to pay my money back,” says Sajjan.

This is the most disturbing part. He got offered $15,000 to shut up. Who made the offer and what are their links?

However, Sajjan says this is no longer about money. Right now the Labour supporter wants to talk to Phil Goff about the character of Neelam Choudary.

Over at NBR I conclude my column on the Choudary allegations with the question about whether Phil Goff will meet or refuse to meet this Labour Party voter who is a victim of crime?

iPredict has stock on whether Worth will leave Parliament in 2009 and the market thinks he will – at 78%.

I am not sure the odds are that high. With the earlier allegation somewhat unravelling (but not totally), it is hard to see what will trigger him being forced to quit. However he may decide to quit anyway rather than spend two years miserable as a backbencher. I’d personally not price the stock at over 60%.

There is also a stock on whether a second Minister will depart in 2009 and that is at 39%. Again I think that is too high and would put it at 25% at this stage.

I,like many, fell for the story that Phil Goff told. I went on radio and said that Worth must go, on the basis of the earlier allegation on top of the later criminal complaint.

One interviewer asked me if I was saying that MPs can’t remain MPs or Ministers if they have an affair, and I was quick to say no that is not the case – a consensual affair is no disqualification for office. And neither is hitting on someone of the other sex (or same sex if that is your flavour). If that was the threshold then Parliament would be a far smaller place.

But the case that Phil Goff drew was of an unworldy timid woman who was so scared of Dr Worth that she did not know how to get him to stop, so finally in desperation went to Phil Goff, and Goff intervened to get him to stop. It was the harrassing predatory nature of the allegations that was damning. That does not excuse Dr Worth for any of his actions, but it does change very much the story that was being told.

The revelation that the woman was not just a party member or even a party activist, but tried to become a Labour MP in 2008 changes things dramatically. I know lots of parliamentary candidates for Labour and National. They are not unwordly shrinking violets who can’t handle themselves.

In fact the notion that an apsiring parliamentary candidate was so overwhelmed by the attention of an MP, she could not tell him to piss off, is ludicrous when you consider the role of an MP is to get up in Parliament and rip into the MPs and Ministers on the other side of the House.

This is not to say that Worth was not creepy towards her, and did not behave stupidly, inappropriately or even worse. He may well have – and is suffering the consequences.

But Phil Goff massively misrepresented the story in terms of how he portrayed this.

I am finding the story full of holes. She said she took the matter to Goff so the calls would stop, but it is now clear she went to Goff long before the calls became allegedly inappropriate.

She also said at another stage she went to Goff because Worth had offered her a job – but in today’s Herald we learn she contacted Goff before she had the coffee with Worth where he allegedly made the job offer.There are lots of things not adding up here.

I have had coffee with many Labour Party candidates. I trust they don’t all ring up Phil Goff for permission before they have a coffee with someone from another party.

I’m trying to put together a timeline of this whole thing, and will blog it when I have. The more you look the more you find things such as Barry Soper’s contention today that Phil Goff’s office were the ones who originally leaked the existence of the allegation to the media, so they would ask John Key if there had been any other complaints.

I am somewhat staggered that the Supreme Court supressed claims that David Bain in his 111 call said “I shot the prick”.

Sure there is dispute over whether that is what he said, but I would have thought a jury would be allowed to hear the tape and work out for themselves if they agree with the claim or not. The High Court and Court of Appeal said they should be able to.

The suppression order has also been released this time on other evidence which the Herald printed a week or so ago. I blogged on it at the time and removed the blog item after it became clear it was still supressed. Not it is not, I have restored my original blog item.

When I read the allegations about what he said at school about his paper run, I joked to someone at the time that this now explains why he was still doing a paper run in his 20s!

Audrey Young and Patrick Gower write:

The husband of the woman who accused ousted minister Richard Worth of sending her sleazy text messages was convicted of an immigration scam. …

Has he been sentenced? It was originally scheduled for February.

Labour leader Phil Goff said last night he was concerned that the woman had been named and that her husband was being brought into the story.

The reason she has been identified is because Goff and Rudman could not keep their mouths shut. Goff’s description of her as “strikingly beautiful” was hugely important in people identifying her – along with Rudman’s revelation she was not just a member or activist but in fact had tried to become an MP.

His status had “nothing to do with the accuracy or the credibility or the veracity of what she has said was her experience with Richard Worth”, he said.

Well that depends on what her knowledge was of what her husband was doing. One may be aware but not be complicit.

One of the victims, Siddesh Sajjan, last night told the Herald he met Kumar and Neelam Choudary in 2002 and paid them $3500 for a job offer that turned out to be fake.

He said that although Neelam Choudary was not charged, “she is a troublemaker”.

This is first hand testimony that she was involved with making a job offer. Now as she was not charged, it is probable that she did not realise the job did not exist, but why get involved with making an offer if you don’t know that it is genuine.

A Labour supporter who lives in Mt Roskill and voted for Mr Goff, he said he had considered warning the party about her earlier when she became heavily involved with it, and regretted not doing so.

So the victim of the fraud is not a National Party member, activist or complainant.

Mr Goff said Mrs Choudary was now under enormous stress.

And who the fuck caused that? Who told the country she is strikingly beautiful allowing her to be recognised? Who has tried to keep the story on the front page for day after day by drip feeding e-mails and advising her not to hand the e-mails over to the PM’s Chief of Staff? Who tried to turn it into a political circus by insisting he attend any meeting with the PM as her “support person”?

Tracy Watkins and Clio Francis reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff yesterday accused National of outing the woman after Naleem Choudary was named on the Right-wing blog Whale Oil as the person claiming Dr Worth offered her plum government positions and subjected her to “vulgar and sexually explicit” phone calls.

The desperate idiot. Goff is the one who helped out her. His comments on her apperance combined with Rudman’s column allowed her to be identified.

The fact is that key people in National have known her identify for a week and they never ever leaked it – despite probably knowing about the fraud conviction. Could you have imagined Labour doing the same and not leaking her identity if she was a National candidate with a convicted fraudaster husband complaining about a Labour Minister? Shit no – her name would have been out within minutes.

I also know that TV3 made a decision to name the woman some hours before her name appeared on a blog. Why? Because Rudman and Goff had effectively identified her already.

Mr Goff refused to confirm the woman’s identity but said he was “really sorry” that a name was out there.

“What does this mean for any other person that wants to stand up and say, `here is a person in a position of power, they’re misusing their power’?”

It means never ever use Phil Goff again as your sexual harrassment advisor.

Mr Goff said he had never hidden the woman’s Labour Party affiliation, including from Mr Key.

“There’s no question at any point other than that she was a member of the Labour Party. I said that the very first time I spoke to John Key and the very first time I spoke to the media about it.”

There is a big big difference between being a member of a political party, and having sought a parliamentary nomination. It is a rare breed of person who wants to become an MP and is prepared to live such a public life by doing so. I will blog more on this later.

Mr Goff accused individuals “with close links to the National Party” of pressuring Ms Choudary to “shut up”, and said there was a deliberate attempt to undermine her.

Not sure who he is talking about, but I actually want her to supply all the text messages – in both directions – as Goff promised.

“Clearly, a political decision was made from the National Party that they would not respect her privacy and that they would attack her credibility.”

The desperate smear to cover up the fact he is more responsible than anyone except Brian Rudman for outing her.

The pub here in Kingsland is packed – well over 200 people here – MPs, activists, supporters – a who’s who of NZ politics almost.

The audience is very noisy it will be hard to hear it all. But TVNZ have kindly arranged a place near the front for us, so will try my best.

Labour/Green supporters booing when ACT candidate introduced. I absolutely hate the boors who do that. You cheer your side and heckle the other side – but just booing is pathetic and puerile.

Just did a clip about the David Bain trial. Wallace did not mention he was a witness!

Each candidate saying why they should be the MP – 30 seconds each.

Nothing new.

Now they are doing a Mt Albert trivia quiz. Lee doing well.

Vox Pop on Government’ proposed motorway option – 6 support, 4 against.

God there are a lot of MPs here – even some from Dunedin – and you paid for all their travel!

Very hard to hear. Wallace needs to take control.

Signing off – can’t hear enough – lots of fun though – people should be here.

Both TV stations have revealed (as did Whale Oil earlier in the day) that Neelam Choudary is Complainant A. She stood for Labour’s nomination for Botany in the 2008 election – so this was someone who wanted to be an MP – not a shy retiring unworldy type.

I will blog more on this tomorrow. But it is a matter of public record that Neelam’s husband has was convicted in December 2008:

Kumar Akkineni Choudary and Lourdu Joseph William Reddy, who both moved to New Zealand from India in the 1990s, tricked more than 20 Indian and Chinese immigrants, either already in the country or overseas, into paying thousands of dollars. …

An Indian national now living in the Auckland suburb of Avondale told the Herald he met Choudary and his wife Neelam in 2002 after hearing about the scheme from a friend back in India who read an advertisement in a newspaper.

The highly qualified 32-year-old was asked to pay $3500 in return for a job offer.

“They said that if you paid a bit of extra money, they could get the case sped up. They said that they had some contacts with the immigration office people.”

About five days after their fist meeting, the Choudarys sent the man a job offer working on computers for a company called Xzact.

The Herald article does not state that Neelam was charged with anything, but the wording refers to the Choudarys plural as making the job offers.

Choudary was found guilty on six fraud charges.

I repeat my earlier call that all the texts – in both directions – should be made available. Public damaging allegations have been made that could force an MP out of Parliament, and I think we need to see what the replies were to understand why the alleged harrassment went on for so long.

Backbenches tonight will be in Auckland – at the Neighbourhood Brew Bar, 498 New North Road. It starts at 9 pm, but come early for good positioning.

For those who don’t get Freeview, I’ll be live blogging it tonight, and Whale Oil will be live twittering on #MtAlbert. You can also watch it later on TVNZ on Demand.

The four main candidates are speaking plus United Future candidate Judy Turner.

Brian Rudman wrote in the Herald:

One was a married woman who had stood unsuccessfully for selection as a candidate for Labour Party nomination in last year’s election

Now that narrows it down massively from activist to candidate nominee, and makes it pretty easy for someone to use Google to make an educated guess.

Note I will delete comments that mention the likely name – or any name.

Incidentally, this makes it even worse for Richard Worth – if he was hitting on not just a Labour Party activist, but an actual candidate – that is damn reckless.

UPDATE: It is actually the combination of Goff’s comments on her appearance, and Rudmans column that makes identifying her fairly simple. So Phil has helped out her!

I think the Herald editorial today nails it:

John Key is not the first Prime Minister to sack a Cabinet member for conduct unbecoming a minister. Helen Clark, until her third term, made quite an art of it. Mr Key could learn from her. The art lies in an economy of words. When the deed is done the Prime Minister should explain the dismissal in terms that do not invite a prolonged discussion.

We should not have had this daily game of political ping-pong between Mr Key and his opposite, Phil Goff, over who knew what and when, about complaints from women who say they received the unwanted attentions of former Internal Affairs Minister Richard Worth. There must be far more important matters on Mr Key’s plate, if not Mr Goff’s.

Agreed. Sometimes John’s propensity to be open and responsive can backfire on him. As the editorial says, an economy of words would be preferable to arguing over what time the phone call was – especially when you get it wrong.

It is a measure of Labour’s desperation for attention that its leader is making comment. Normally when something of this nature surfaces the rival party is content to keep out of it, calculating that it has nothing to gain and much to lose by taking cheap shots at a target that is fatally wounded.

In this case, Mr Goff sees an opportunity to besmirch Mr Key with the fact that the complaint on which the Prime Minister acted was not the first he had received. The first, from a woman in the Labour Party, had been relayed by Mr Goff a few weeks earlier. He says Mr Key did not bother to check it out.

Mr Goff said the woman had been offered public posts and there was email traffic to prove it. But when challenged to produce that evidence, Mr Goff had to admit he did not have it. Still, he thinks Mr Key should have asked for it.

Desperation for attention is the motive. And Goff has failed totally to front up with any evidence. The handful of texts in today’s Herald, are not grounds to sack an MP, especially as they are given without any context of all the texts both sent and received.

Then he tried to organise a meeting between the woman and Mr Key with himself present for her support. Mr Key agreed to it, though not with Mr Goff present, then decided the woman should talk to his chief of staff instead, and Mr Goff could be present. But Mr Goff advised the woman she should not accept anything less than a meeting with the Prime Minister.

And as I said yesterday, Goff’s career as a sexual harrassment counsellor is not going to be a long one.

Whether or not it comes to that, the political career of a once prominent Auckland lawyer, the long-time chairman of the firm Simpson Grierson, is plainly over. Mr Key says he will not have him back in his Cabinet regardless of the result of a police investigation of the complaint from a second woman. In that respect, he echoes the attitude of Helen Clark who held her ministers to higher standards of behaviour than those defined in criminal law.

Mind you, Helen did recycle those she sacked – even those who broke the law.

The Herald’s inquiries suggest the second complaint against Dr Worth are unlikely to result in charges. The complainant, a businesswoman in her 40s, is said to have accepted the minister’s hospitality in a Wellington hotel and had breakfast with him next morning.

If that is correct, that will be a huge relief to Dr Worth and his family. Losing your Ministerial job, or even your parliamentary job, is nothing compared to possibily losing your freedom.