Barclay saga now far more damaging

Far too late, National MP Todd Barclay’s leaders have told him what to do. He will see out his term as MP for Clutha-Southland but he will not be National’s candidate at this election. He has learned the hard way that honesty is the best policy in politics. On Tuesday he found himself still “refuting” a charge his Prime Minister had just confirmed to be true — he did record conversations in his electorate office without the parties to the conversations being aware of it.

Probably he did not know this could be an offence under the Crimes Act. Probably he wishes now he had said so as soon as reporters asked whether he had done it. A plea of ignorance would have been scorned, since legislators are supposed to know the law, but he would have survived that. He was just 25, Parliament’s youngest member. He would have faced tougher questions about what he had done, or not done, to fall out with an electorate agent who had worked with Bill English for so long.

He was constrained by the confidentiality of the settlement by Parliamentary Service of the agent’s employment dispute with him, but a more experienced politician could have advised him not to “refute” matters of fact in public. He was not in a court of law where technicalities might matter, he was in a public forum where he would have been better to be as candid as he could be.

However confidential the settlement was supposed to be, English did not feel constrained in response to questions about it from National’s Clutha-Southland electorate chairman in February last year. The text message from English not only described the recording but mentions that it was a factor in the size of the settlement paid to the former agent partly from a leader’s fund at the disposal of the Prime Minister, then Sir John Key.

English too, and Key, must be wishing they had handled their young MP’s problems a little better at the time. They must have known him well, Barclay had been an intern with English and was on Key’s staff for a time before coming into Parliament. The National Party’s electorate office in Gore is a long way from the higher floors of the Beehive, and its troubles should not be taking up the time of a Finance Minister or Prime Minister, but when those troubles began surfacing in public they must have received attention at that level.

In public, English, like Key before him, pretended to know little about it. They left the new MP to deal with questions as best he could manage. His best was not good enough. When he was issuing denials that he had recorded his staff, his leaders should have given him some advice. In politics, anything less than the truth is likely to come back to bite you sooner or later.

How hard would it have been for the Government if it had not tried to cover up the rift in one electorate and the protagonists had been able to speak freely when it came to a head 18 months ago. Not as damaging as it is now that hush money has been paid from public funds, the Prime Minister has had to correct a patently false statement, the police are re-opening an investigation and the election is 14 weeks away.