Editorial: More silly than sinister

OPINION: Phil Heatley's shock decision to resign his housing and fisheries portfolios, ostensibly over two bottles of wine, appeared to be such a knee-jerk reaction that even Labour's deputy leader Annette King thought it strange.

So instead of calling for his head, she found herself asking whether or not there was a better reason for chopping it off than the public was given.

In the absence of anything more than a minister who was careless with his credit card spending on relatively small items, the story underlines the high level of accountability and the low level of corruption that marks the New Zealand political scene.

Where Mr Heatley weeps over some spilt wine, Britain's House of Commons has spent the past year dealing with crooked Lords and MPs who used taxpayer's money for everything from clearing a moat to blowing more than $20,000 on "envelopes, paper and postage".

They don't do things by half in the UK. The expenses scandal there was sparked by the same transparency in publishing MPs' expenses that New Zealand MPs subsequently agreed to expose themselves to. It invariably catches some out and it has tripped up Mr Heatley.

His fate is considerably less dramatic than that facing some of his counterparts in the UK. This month it was announced criminal charges would be laid against Labour MPs Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine and Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield over allegations of false accounting. In the wake of some of the allegations against MPs to emerge over the past year, Britain's The Times wrote of "Parliament's Darkest Day".

Thursday may have been Phil Heatley's darkest day but, unlike some British MPs, it is likely he will have the opportunity to bounce back. To date he has been exposed for being extraordinarily careless rather than, as appears the case in Britain, criminal behaviour.

The opening of the books by MPs over the last year – led, it should be acknowledged, by the Greens – has cost one minister his job when he might well have weathered the storm, and exposed some fairly minor other misdemeanours. But it remains a thoroughly worthwhile and necessary exercise.

MPs previously used the excuse that New Zealand was too small a country to conceal the type of rort British MPs could get away with. New Zealand is, after all, one of the least corrupt nations on Earth, according to various polls. But that's not the point. Businesses make their employees accountable for how corporate money is spent, and so too should the public expect to see how the MPs they elect use public money.

Mr Heatley's errors of judgment have hit him in the pocket and hurt his reputation. The damage need not be permanent. For his sake though, the lesson learned from it had better be.

- © Fairfax NZ News