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Chris Carter Labour MP - Source: ONE News -
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Labour MP Chris Carter is in trouble with his party again for making a joke comparing New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
On Thursday night Carter leaned out of his parliamentary window, while Key was posing on the Beehive balcony during a photo-shoot with the Dominion Post, and called the likeness as he saw it.
"John, you look like Benito Mussolini," Carter recalls saying, adding that "(Key) responded 'well, it worked.'
"We had a laugh, it was a light-hearted moment."
Carter later blogged about the incident, but it was later removed by the blog's editor Trevor Mallard, who did not see the funny side.
"Trevor was sensitive to anyone who found it offensive. There are people still alive who suffered under fascism; that wasn't something I thought about when I put the blog up," says Carter.
However, senior members of the Labour Party are taking the matter seriously after previous concerns about his travel spending and claims that he has been targeted by the media because he is gay.
Carter has offered an apology, but insists he did not mean to cause offence.
