Is it possible for the Opposition to be too paranoid while the all-controlling and almost all-knowing Helen Clark rules from the Beehive's ninth floor down? Probably not from their point of view.
In fact, most Ministers, other Labour MPs and the Alliance members could also do with being wary. It's almost pointlessly obvious to say that our Prime Minister is very clever indeed, admirably so if you're on her side, formidably if you're not. She is also controlling, and the events of the last week have some in the Parliamentary complex looking twice at the Bellamy's pies, just in case she's had her fingers in those as well.
For example, would it be just too paranoid to speculate about whether the leaked New Zealand Post business plan for a people's bank could have possibly come from the ninth floor? Maybe, but it was terribly convenient that Richard Prebble was blissfully distracted last week from more sensitive political matters by the prospect of continuing to leak where Jenny Shipley left off, after she chose to shred her version of the document.
The ACT Leader, who is widely acknowledged as a masterfully annoying Opposition politician, had almost no time to harass Phillida Bunkle and Marion Hobbs over the developing allowances scandal. He had found himself a new, and for some, faintly unbelievable role, as the defender of free speech. He was beside himself with glee, brandishing the business plan in the House. He was so excited, he was jiggling like a man busting for a pee as he waited to fire more leak-filled inquiries at the Government in Parliamentary Question Time. He was grinning like the village idiot as he accepted the writ on the steps of Parliament that entitled him to more headlines, more television and, as if that wasn't enough fun, a day in court to really stick it to New Zealand Post.
But then, would it be too paranoid to speculate that perhaps the Prime Minister had had enough of this carry on by Friday morning? Prebble could have his day in court, and while he was there, Hobbs and Bunkle would have the news of their resignations made public. Friday is often a very busy day in the television newsroom. I have no idea why, but news sometimes seems to build up during the week. If a scandal is to come to a head in a double Ministerial resignation, there is, in some ways, no better day for it to happen - better chances of even bigger new stories coming along and better odds that Friday night drinks will keep some people away from the news. But then surely it would really be paranoid to suggest that the timing in this case could have been so cynically planned.
Almost as paranoid as Anderton might have felt when Linda Clark asked him on Friday night's Late Edition whether Marion Hobbs paying back the money she may have fraudulently claimed for out-of-town allowances put pressure on Phillida Bunkle, who had all along maintained she had done nothing wrong. Anderton looked like you could have knocked him over with a legitimately acquired taxi chit. Where did that information come from, he might have wondered?
Of course it would be paranoid to think that Labour had spent any of last week investigating any way to separate Marion from Phillida sufficiently to keep the former and flick the latter. It is true that Phillida ignored or was ignorant of a Prime Ministerial edict that Ministers with homes in Wellington should not also be entitled to a Minsiterial flat there. It is also true that Bunkle got strangely confused about how many bedrooms she had in her own Wellington home.
Both Ministers, very clearly in the public eye, were claiming out-of-town allowances while enrolled on the electoral role in Wellington. But, in the public eye, there were other differences. Phillida laid herself open to more scrutiny and criticism while Marion Hobbs kept very, very quiet. The Labour Minister has had excellent media advice all through the stir about her living arrangements while the Alliance Minister has been without a press secretary since hers went to Lianne Dalziel's office last year. No one was telling Bunkle to keep quiet. For her sake, someone should have been.
The other leak of the week was the 10-page, slightly hysterical letter which Phillida wrote to the Auditor General in defence of her allegedly fraudulent allowance claims.
There are the details about the end of her marriage, the mentions of the boarder she thought of as one of the family and the fact she started a relationship with his father. Several Days of Her Lives later, there was another relationship and then there was the organic farming attempt and the long process she had gone through and all the advice she had taken when weighing up whether or not to leave University teaching for politics. Consider this little extract:
"I began to formulate a new future. It was of great importance to be to develop a commitment to a new long-term base that would take me through another 20 years and hopefully into old age."
It makes fascinating and bizarre reading and in this case, it really might be too paranoid to think that it could have come from the Prime Minister's office. Not because it would have dismayed the ninth floor for this one to get out, but because there are too many other places it could have come from. It's understood that Phillida was actually under quite some pressure from her own leader to hand in her resignation. Anderton could have been the source of the leak, but then some are suggesting that it could very well have come from the woman herself.
Phillida has been and still is vehement in her own defence. She is adamant that she has done nothing wrong and she may have thought the letter would show people that. But it reads more like a cry for help than a pseudo legal defence and in the end, the headlines were about the newly-discovered bedroom in her formerly one-bedroomed Thorndon cottage. So could Phillida really have been that silly? Possibly. Some in Parliament talk about there being two Phillidas, one capable, one a bit helpless. Others say much less kind things about her.
It's enough to make anyone paranoid.
