People are a funny lot. We're always on about how our politicians are dishonest and unprincipled. There is a perception that they have only their own interests at heart and are more than willing to dip into the the country's money to serve their own ends.
Unfortunately, these perceptions are often correct. Rodney Hide took his girlfriend to the UK to attend her brother's wedding, and claimed it all as a business trip. Hone Harawira also left an official conference early so that he could take his wife to Paris, then took offence when it was suggested that he had acted inappropriately. Neither of these two, to the best of my knowledge has paid the money back.
So it was no surprise to some people when National MP Phil Heatley was found to have use his parliamentary credit card, which is for official business only, on personal expenses to the tune of a few thousand dollars. Even the sceptics probably believe that this is the entire extent of his offending, and that even this would probably make him one of the worse offenders, at least in terms of credit card expenditure.
Rather than use the bluff and bluster that we have got used to from our politicians, and try to brush it off as nothing out of the ordinary – an honest mistake, that anyone might have made – he decided that the only thing, in good conscience, that he could do would be to resign his ministerial post.
This, it seems to me, is in accordance with Westminster traditions: if you have erred, the honourable thing to do is resign, and hope to do enough good in future years that you may be reinstated. His performance has, from all accounts, been good, if not outstanding, so it is quite likely that he will get another chance – especially if National gets re-elected, as seems likely.
But still the people are not happy. If the blog posts that I have been reading are any indication of the national feeling, this resignation is a bad thing, not a good one. The feeling is that he must have some ulterior motive. The most popular theory is that he has something far worse to reveal, and has resigned to stave off the negative effects of that. This hardly seems likely – if there were worse to come and he wanted to stay in Parliament, wouldn't he have admitted it before resigning, or waited until it was revealed, rather than go to the Backbenches with a sword still hanging over his head? Future events may, of course, prove me wrong, but I am full of support for Mr. Heatley.
The resignation was also, apparently, unexpected. John Key had already flown down to Christchurch for the day, and hurried back when he heard the news. So this was not a case of jumping before he was pushed, that would have been expected by all those in the higher echelons of the National Party. It was done because Mr Heatley believed that it was the right thing to do.
Perhaps we are so unaccustomed to honourable behaviour that we no longer recognise it when we see it. Or perhaps the mistrust of politicians runs so deep that we believe them to be incapable of making any honest decisions at all, and to always be thinking of themselves.
The only disappointing thing is that he doesn't seem to understand who he has let down the most. He apologised to his colleagues and the Prime Minister first of all, when the real losers here are the people of New Zealand. Nonetheless, he has at least attempted to atone for his actions, and for that he deserves praise.