It is a measure of the lack of accountability of our parliament that Phil Heatley's resignation from his ministerial roles on Thursday caused so much wonderment. The prime minister and a number of pundits openly questioned the need for such sacrifice.So let's be clear: Heatley did exactly the right thing. He was caught out on a minor expenses rort, and those two truths are relevant. Caught ... and ... rort.
There is no ethics standard that allows a cabinet minister to have a family holiday paid for by the taxpayer.
If the Dominion Post had not exposed the expenditure, then the Whangarei MP would still have his job. And, presumably, his credit card.
What Heatley did was admit that he had stuffed up. And then he observed the proper procedure – acceptance, apology, atonement. The last always being the critical determinant of honour. Without it, everything else is an insincere gesture.
I have some insight into such failures of judgement and character because I resigned 14 years ago in similarly petty circumstances. So I empathise with the Whangarei MP and most especially with his conundrum. He will have barely slept, he will have imbibed more liquor than average, he will have shared agonising phone calls with his partner.
And he will have felt hunted. That feeling when you know you've done something wrong and you just want it all to go away. But it won't. One good thing about resignation is that it gives you a good night's sleep.
Better still, Heatley's is only half a resignation. He still keeps his electorate seat, his parliamentary salary and the attendant status of being an MP. The door back to cabinet has been kept ajar in a way that it never was for Richard Worth.
It also proves something else. It's never the big scandals that slay you. It is, most often, the minor and the petty. Primarily because people understand small numbers but not large. If he had misappropriated millions, he could simply have blamed the vicissitudes of fate or some failure of policy. It's harder to explain $1200.
And so the affair is already passed this Sunday morning. He will, most likely, be excused by the Audit Office as having made mistakes by misunderstanding. Should National be returned in 2011, expect Heatley to be returned to cabinet. If not with the credit card.
But Heatley has done one significant disfavour to his colleagues. He has unwittingly established a new and unwelcome standard of behaviour and accountability for all current and future cabinet ministers. It may even be the right standard. Because it is way higher than the existing one.
New Zealand parliamentarians are appallingly bad at accepting any responsibility for mistake, incompetence or cock-up. It is still the standard to blame departmental advice or communication error. This blame-shifting has since infected the entire public service.
It is never anyone's fault. It is the amorphous system. Which is why no one loses their job from the health sector despite sentinel events solely due to individual error. In fact, the de facto desire is to protect the professional rather than seek any justice for the patient.
But parliament continues to plumb the depths in public accountability. Despite the quarterly release of minister and MPs' travel expenditure, it makes no attempt to scrutinise the quality of that spending. Phil Heatley's mistake seemed to be that he was so obvious – not that he funded petty private pleasures with public monies.
Indeed the sotto voce nudge was that he should have let his ministerial staff use their departmental credit cards – and in that way avoid scrutiny altogether. Which is pretty much how personal venality is hidden within parliament. That the precinct remains immune from the Official Information Act is an absolute scandal.
After all, it is not their money. It is ours.
But then the public sector is a swamp of avarice. A swill of special interests who congregate to soak taxpayers for everything from conferences to koha. The kind of petty theft of which Heatley has been pinged is simply de rigueur.
Which is, again, why Heatley's resignation is both welcome and illustrative. It should be seen as the new example when one cocks up. The former minister was a serial offender: his action was not a one-off. He was not cash-strapped at a bar somewhere and paid the monies back on Monday morning. He had every intention of ensuring that the taxpayer paid for his convenience.
Unlike the rort that was ministerial housing allowances, such minor mendacity was not within some self-serving standard.
But where Heatley wins my admiration is that he personally recognised all the above. He could have stood and fought and, if the prime minister's comments are any indication, he could have stayed. Which makes Richard Worth's departure look even more personal, doesn't it? After all, he was drummed from the party.
Instead Heatley accepted that he had done wrong. No equivocation, no justification. That takes an inner moral compass to accept no matter that it was once awry. Phil Heatley has restored his honour.
Now for that example to be applied across the parliamentary spectrum. Let's not hold our breath.
Sunday Star Times, February 28, 2010