‘Wives are left to pick up the pieces’
What a week in politics. Last week, we saw the dark arts exposed with Michelle Boag’s leaking of confidential patient information to MP Hamish Walker, who in turn showed that information to the press.
The National Party’s then-leader Todd Muller was incapable of dealing with the fallout from that scandal, so three people were taken out — a National Party grandee who had to leave the party before she was drummed out; an up-and-coming MP who could have enjoyed a long political career but for an extraordinary lack of judgment; and a decent man who seems to have been promoted beyond his competence.
Enter Judith Collins as National Party leader, who had just a few days’ grace before she had to deal with revelations that one of her MPs had been sending inappropriate messages to young women.
They are not believed to be pictures of his own unlovely body parts, and for that we should be thankful, but pornographic images nonetheless.
When summonsed to his leader to account for his actions, Andrew Falloon lied like a cornered rat. He came up with a variation of “the dog ate my homework” when he said he’d left his phone unattended at a function and some “friends” had sent the images. It was just the one, he said, and besides, he was suffering mental health issues.
Well, no, actually. Five young women have come forward to say they received unsolicited, unwanted images from Falloon and police are now investigating.
He resigned from politics, effective immediately, and thus will have plenty of time to work on his mental health issues.
I really don’t understand the attraction of sending pornographic images of yourself or other people as an opening gambit. I guess that shows my age.
But apparently, it’s incredibly common for young people, young women especially, to receive all sorts of graphic images on their phone. Such is the prevalence of pornography.
When I was a teenager, I had to rely on Latin poet Catullus — who really was filthy. So filthy, I had no idea what he was talking about in most of his poems and just presumed I had translated them imperfectly.
Only after I smuggled Jacqueline Sussan’s Once is Not Enough and Shirley Conran’s Lace into boarding school did I begin to understand what went on and the remarkable places people put what where. Although, as pornography goes, it was pretty empowering. The women were always in control. There were no submissive victims in these ’80s bonkbusters. And any man who took without asking got his comeuppance.
Before we’d had a chance to put the smelling salts back in the cupboard after the Falloon revelations, the Prime Minister sacked her Workplace Relations Minister for having year-long relations with one of his workplace staffers. He’s gone from Cabinet, won’t be standing in the election and an audit has been undertaken of his spending during his time as minister to ensure no public funds were used to pay for trinkets for his mistress.
So far it looks like he personally covered the costs of his girlfriend’s junket to Paris to join him there while he was on ministerial business, but if I was Mrs Lees-Galloway and I’d never been taken further than the Waikanae Motor Camp on holiday, I would be justifiably furious that the household account had paid for my husband’s floozy’s flights.
And that’s really where the news headlines become people’s private pain — there are wives and children involved in all these scandals and they’re the ones who have to pick up the pieces and carry on. Who knows what next week holds?
We are just eight weeks from the election, and at a time when we should be hearing about the policies that will navigate this country through an incredibly difficult time, the headlines are being dominated by scandals that bonkbuster novelists could only dream of.
It’s time for politicians to get down to business and take their responsibilities seriously.