In Da House...

During Tuesday's Question Time, Helen Clark was taken to task for being harder on Kit Richards than she was on Haami Piripi as Kit Richards was forced out of his job in 1999 while Haami is still employed despite foretelling civil war. Her response brought back memories and I've emphasized one sentence in the following exchange:

Dr Don Brash: How does she reconcile her position in regard to Mr Kit Richards, whom she demanded be sacked over a personal email sent from his home computer, which he described at the time as “guerrilla warfare”, with her position in regard to Mr Haami Piripi, who made a public submission to a select committee of Parliament, threatening civil war, or is this another example of different rules for different categories of New Zealanders?

Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I am surprised that anyone has accused me of being soft on Mr Piripi. Mr Richards attacked Government policy covering his own State organisation. Further, he made threatening comments about me, the Minister in charge of Timberlands, and about Marian Hobbs. There is all the difference in the world between a State employee who directly undermines the policy of the Government for the organisation for which he works, and Mr Piripi, who made comments about another part of Government policy. However, I want to tell the member that I would take exactly the same view as I have of Mr Piripi’s action if it were, say, the chief executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority pronouncing on education policy, or the chief executive of Transit pronouncing on transport policy. It is not appropriate, and that is why new legislation will see that the State Services Commissioner has a role in setting down guidelines in that area.

The threatening comments that Kit Richards made about Clark and Hobbs was about wanting "fingers to get burned". When this came out, Helen ballistically intepreted the expression as a literal desire by Kit to actually burn her fingers and from Tuesday's transcript, she still does. Yet at the same time as the Richards furore, Clark was also embroiled in a row with the TVNZ board about John Hawkesbury's sacking. When asked on television "whether heads should roll", Clark responded that "it was a question of whose to roll". Although the chairman of the TVNZ board resigned soon after, her neck was mysteriously still intact...