Fresh claims on girls' dorm

David Benson-Pope is said to have entered this girls' dormitory at the Tautuku camp. Picture / Otago Daily Times

Embattled Cabinet minister David Benson-Pope is facing new allegations about his teaching career, including a claim that he entered a girls' dormitory a year after his school's policy was changed to ban male teachers from such areas.

The Social Development Minister has also had to endure the Prime Minister implying that he had given Parliament a wrong answer.

Helen Clark yesterday backed away from her previously staunch defence of her minister, saying he had made an "error of judgment" in telling Parliament last year that he was not aware of any complaint of any kind during his 24 years teaching.

"But I do not consider it sufficient reason to dismiss a minister," Helen Clark said.

Despite not sacking her minister, the statement showed she disapproved of Mr Benson-Pope's parliamentary answer, which is at the heart of the controversy surrounding him.

There is also understood to be annoyance within Labour at the way Mr Benson-Pope and his office have handled the allegations.

The minister again refused the Herald's request for an interview - the third day in a row.

But Newstalk ZB political editor Barry Soper grabbed a few words as the minister headed out of Parliament. A tearful Mr Benson-Pope said he was appalled by the way the Opposition had treated him and said it was dishonest and mostly "incredibly dated".

Act leader Rodney Hide hit Mr Benson-Pope with a new allegation that he entered a girls' dormitory, where 14-year-old girls were undressed, on a Bayfield High School camp, at Tautuku, in 1998, the year after he was told of a parent's complaint about it, and after the school changed its policy to stop it happening.

If this latest allegation is proved the Government will not be able to use its previous defence that Mr Benson-Pope acted inside school policy at the time.

Mr Benson-Pope said he was "not aware of any further allegations".

In a fierce parliamentary session the Government struck back at National, implying they had incriminating information about deputy leader Gerry Brownlee's conduct as a teacher.

Mr Brownlee told the Herald no parents, teachers or students had laid complaints against him in regard to inappropriate behaviour while he was a teacher and he had not been disciplined in any way.

The Opposition used every opportunity to lay into Mr Benson-Pope, calling him a "pathological bully, liar and pervert", "deceitful" and "not fit to be in control of children".