Sauce for the goose

Kerry Burke (July 19) wrote that had Metira Turei’s benefit ‘fraud’ happened when she was an MP, she would have had to resign.

In 2009 Bill English was forced to repay a wrongly claimed living allowance of $32,000. He had considered his house in Dipton, Southland, to be his primary residence whilst he and his family had been living in their $1.2 million Karori house, as revealed by Stuff at the time. His children were in school in Wellington, his wife working there as well.

He did not, like Metiria Turei, declare this ‘oversight’, but the media found out and exposed it. He first repaid $12,000 of it and as it did not quieten the issue, repaid the lot. We can give him the benefit of doubt, but I believe it was pretty cheeky on his part.

Turei’s so-called fraud would seem like chicken feed compared to this, based on her youth and naivety, English was neither young nor naive. Felicien Forgues Woodend