Contest for Palmerston North seat suddenly more interesting

The departure of Iain Lees-Galloway from politics makes the race for the Palmerston North seat, which features 18-year-old National Party candidate William Wood, more interesting.

Lees-Galloway won the seat in 2017 by roughly 6000 votes – but the party vote margin is much slimmer.

Last election, Labour won 14,648 votes compared with National’s 14,276.

This public scandal will hurt Labour, and could assist Wood.

Lees-Galloway entered Parliament in 2008 – the same year as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The MP – known to some around the halls of power as ILG – has previously been in the headlines for the wrong reasons.

As Immigration Minister, he came under pressure during the Karel Sroubek saga.

Sroubek — also known as Jan Antolik — was granted residency by Lees-Galloway, despite having gang affiliations.

Sroubek was also a convicted drug smuggler, serving a more than fiveyear prison sentence in New Zealand for the importing of MDMA.

Lees-Galloway eventually backed down and issued Sroubek a new deportation liability notice.

But that was not before the then Opposition leader, Simon Bridges, called for the minister’s resignation.

This was after he admitted he didn’t read Sroubek’s whole file.

But his last three years as a Cabinet minister has not been all bad.

In fact, Ardern paid tribute to the work he has done over the past three years in a number of portfolios.

“There are [things] that will happen this week, as a result of the minister’s work.”

These include the passing of the Pay Equity legislation – a law which aims to eliminate and prevent discrimination, on the basis of gender in the workplace.