Kiwiblog

Both Sunday papers have stories on Viliami Halaholo, the father of Paula Bennett’s granddaughter.

The Herald on Sunday cite the most recent parole decision saying he still posed an “undue risk” if released, his drug use in prison (but not recently it seems as last three tests have been clean), and his previous offending. All not a pretty picture.

The Sunday Star-Times has Paul Holmes advising Paula Bennett to basically stop supporting Halaholo, or risk losing her daughter.

There is no doubt Paula and her daughter Ana have some tough decisions, either way. Cutting a father out of a child’s life is not some trivial decision. It means a child that grows up without a father, a mother without a partner, possible legal action, possible conflict within your own family.

Likewise it is a tough and risky decision to give a young man a chance to turn his life around when he is out of prison. If he offends again, then questions of judgement arise.

So it is all a complex measure of risk. If you abandon Halaholo, it is probably almost certain he will return to a life of crime. But if you continue to support him once released, well the risk is still there.

But what do I personally think? Well I think it is a decision for Paula and Ana to be made in private, not on the front page of the Sunday papers, and while well intentioned I am sure – not with the public advice of Paul Holmes. If Paul wanted to really help, then write them a private letter.

There is little new in the Sunday papers on the Paula Bennett story, but worth looking at what has been said.

The main story in the HoS quotes from the two letters released yesterday, and is pretty unexceptional. What I found more interesting was the HoS Editorial, which seems to be slightly schizophrenic in part prasing Paula, while part insisting the public had a right to know. I suspect their original story got a bit of a backlash. An extract:

On the face of it, and in the absence of any evidence arguing to the contrary, Bennett’s decision to take Halaholo under her roof and her pleas in mitigation on his behalf are unexceptionable, understandable and even commendable. At times of strife, particularly when the law is requiring an errant youngster to face the consequences of his actions, family bonds are tested, and those that do not break are precious indeed. It is difficult to imagine that Bennett’s motives in allowing her granddaughter’s father to be bailed to her home were anything other than entirely blameless. Her personal history, which has not been free of tribulation over which she has triumphed, would equip her to be an ideal guardian of a young man who needed watching over, and the non-custodial remand alternatives, presuming they existed, would very probably have been less satisfactory.

I think most people have reached that conclusion.

But that is not the issue. As a society, we quite properly regard election to any public office, and particularly to Parliament, as imposing duties of disclosure above and beyond those that attend on normal citizenship. This is particularly true of ministers, which is why they are required to declare their assets. It is for the public, not the executive, to decide what among their private financial arrangements is and is not relevant to the discharge of their public duties.

There are additional duties of disclosure, but I am not sure your daughter’s boyfriend qualifies. Where do you stop? Your brother’s P habit? Your uncle’s drink driving? Unless there are links to your actions as a Minister, I tend to think it is private business. If a Minister’s child crashes a private car, it should not be noteowrthy. If the car they crash if a Ministerial taxpayer funded car, then it is noteworthy.

So it is in this case. Only three years after being elected to Parliament, Bennett has been entrusted with an important cabinet portfolio at what might be regarded as a tender age. There is no evidence that the hospitality she extended to Halaholo compromised her, but the questions this paper wished to put to her and to her boss remain of public importance. When did she become aware that Halaholo was involved in a gang? What contact has she had with other gang members or associates? Did she, in the security vetting that all ministers undergo, disclose her relationship with a convicted violent offender? What discussion has occurred about the potential security risks involved?

I really don’t think the daughter’s boyfriend being associated with some gang members (I understand he is not in fact a member of any gang) is quite the same thing as having an affair with the girlfriend of a Russian spy (Profume affair).

John Tamihere has a brother who is a convicted killer, and probably knows dozens of gang members. Is anyone suggesting he (when a Minister) should have had to detail to the Cabinet Secretary every gang member he has ever associated with in case it somehow is a security risk?

Hey Rob Muldoon had a few sessions with gang leaders. That is a security risk I guess. Well mainly a risk to the gang members

Personally I think the security risk angle is merely justification for running the story. Not that I’m upset the story was published – I think it shows that Ministers are not some privileged elite with perfect families and lives.

Finally we have the SST story. It is largely unexceptional, except for this first paragraph:

PRIME MINISTER John Key has reprimanded his renegade social development minister Paula Bennett after she failed to tell him about letters of support she had written for her daughter’s jailed partner.

Paula is now a renegade Minister? Wow, let’s use the really colorful language.  Dictionary.com defines a renegade as:

1. a person who deserts a party or cause for another.
2. an apostate from a religious faith.
–adjective
3. of or like a renegade; traitorous.

So maybe we can agree that’s going a bit over the top. As in 1000% over the top.

But at least Paula is in good company if she is now an official renegade. That is also the Secret Service codename for Barack Obama, as detailed in the Telegraph.

My favourite codename is Kittyhawk for Queen Elizabeth II!

I guess the Sunday papers tomorrow will have more details around Paula Bennett’s family relationship with Villami Halaholo as she has released today two letters she wrote in 2007 and mid 2008 to the Parole Board on his behalf.

John Key has also done a release, and sees nothing improper with her advocacy when she was an Opposition MP. However he has chided Bennett for not revealing the letters to him last week when this issue first went public.

So there are two issues here – the letters, and the revealing of them. Let’s quote from the letters:

My daughter is no fool and she started laying down the law pretty heavily on him. If he wanted to be with her then he needed to make some pretty major changes in his life – and he started to. For every couple of steps forward in the early days he would take the odd one back and the night of the incident (that he has since been convicted for) has been his biggest step back ever and has in retrospect been a positive turning point in his life. It would have been easy for us to turn our back on him at that stage and leave him to grow up in jail, but we can be pretty stubborn ourselves, and my daughter and I believed that it was a complete error of judgment on his behalf, he could move forward, but it was up to him. He moved into my residence at that time as a border and he committed himself to staying out of trouble, obeying the law and finding work.

And he has done that. For the last two years he has made significant and consistent changes in his life. Viliami got himself a job. At first he was temping and working in a factory, when this temporary job came to an end, he went out and found another one and has been working overtime and what ever hours he can to provide for his family.

If he has gone from breaking the law to being in employment and working hard, that is a good thing. And you would expect Paula as the baby’s grandmother to want the father in the family, if he has turned himself around. Of course we don’t know if he has behaved in prison, but imagine this will be known to the Parole Board.

So the issue is more the process one of not revealing the advocacy after the initial stories last weekend. And this can be a headache because there is nothing worse than deciding how to respond to an issue, if you do not know all the facts.

I’m a believer in taking a fairly harsh inquisitorial role when “issues” arise. The way I would handle it is to have a staffer sit down with the affected persons and ask them everything they can think of. When did you first meet him? What exactly has he done? Who as affected? How often have you had to help him out? What letters have you ever written about him? Who knows about X? etc etc. Such a session may take some hours, but in my experience it is better to know too much than not enough.

In this case, the existence of the letters doesn’t seem particularly significant. It is what you would expect from family members, and being an MP is not a reason not to advocate. However being a Minister is such a reason, as they have executiye authority within the Government.