Bad day for the broken-hearted

EUGENE BINGHAM looks at the personal issues that led to two ministers' downfalls.

Marian Hobbs, who has kept a low profile since being roasted in the early days of her appointment, must have again been wondering why she left teaching as she unlocked the door to her ministerial office for the last time yesterday.

And Phillida Bunkle has learned the hard way how private blunders risk public fallout.

Whether it be Bill Clinton's seismic indiscretions or Ruth Dyson's decision to take a late night tipple at the office, history shows politicians pay dearly for their personal failings or misfortunes.

Which is why it's not surprising to find that, when the Bunkle-Hobbs scandal is stripped down, the most personal of problems are exposed.

At the core of yesterday's double departure is a tale of domestic disharmony.

Both women have been through heartbreaks and marital separations that disrupted their living arrangements and created upheavals that ultimately cost them their portfolios.

They are under investigation for being registered as Wellington Central voters while apparently maintaining homes elsewhere.

Both have previously been scrutinised for claiming an MP's out-of-town allowance before the 1999 general election.

Last month's probe into their allowance entitlements by Parliamentary Services and the Higher Salaries Commission concluded that they were within their rights to claim up to $6875 every six months because they said their homes were elsewhere.

That they were enrolled in Wellington Central was - legally at least - of no concern as far as Parliament's regulations go.

But the matter did not end there. Opposition MPs gleefully noted that the Electoral Act requires people to register in the electorate they consider their place of primary residence. Ms Bunkle and Ms Hobbs could have their cake, but they couldn't eat it too.

Now, it seems, the Registrar of Electors and the Crown Law Office have conceded the Opposition has a point.

Early yesterday, wise counsel from the upper echelons of the Beehive helped the MPs decide the time had come for them to resign.

Emotions could not get in the way of the move. But they would have been hard to push aside.

If Marian Hobbs was missing the classroom, Ms Bunkle's thoughts were not so obvious.

What is clear is her determination to fight for her job and ministerial salary.

Only last week she said: "The only circumstances in which I would make any decision is on the basis of the appropriate authority. That authority is primarily the Auditor-General.

"I don't believe that I should give in to trial by media. I believe Jim Anderton is also completely rational and he is also waiting for the Auditor-General's report."

Privately, no doubt, the former Minister of Customs would have spent many an hour in her fourth-floor Beehive office contemplating what to do.

Perhaps it was there that she decided to write a letter to the Controller and Auditor-General, David Macdonald.

The February 7 letter, released last week after it began to leak out, is a compelling insight into Ms Bunkle's thinking. The English-born former women's studies associate professor pours out intimate details about her life in the past decade and reveals the uncertainty she had about becoming an MP.

"My marriage," begins the third paragraph, "deteriorated from 1991 and ended in 1993." Understandably, she doesn't elaborate on what led to her split from the Government's chief historian, Dr Jock Phillips.

But what follows over the next 10 pages is a tale of heartbreak and new love for this Oxford and Harvard-educated health and women's rights campaigner.

The letter provides telling insight into the woman whose co-authorship of The Unfortunate Experiment - the Metro magazine article about cervical cancer treatment at National Women's Hospital in the 1960s - launched a career as a people's champion.

Ms Bunkle told the Auditor-General that she initially remained in the family home at Karori, but she eventually decided it was time to move on with her life.

"The uncertainty of this prolonged deterioration meant that I wanted to leave that phase of my life behind. I wanted a new home that would take me away from the past."

She began the search for a property on which to live a Good Life dream. The idea was to find a piece of land suitable for sustainable and organic living.

Around the time Ms Bunkle was buying a block in Waikanae, north of Wellington, she was also starting a relationship with John Lepper, now an economic adviser to Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton.

Ms Bunkle had already stood for Parliament, though she admitted in the letter that she had mixed motivation about running as a Green Party candidate in 1993.

"I stood ... partly as a diversion from my failed marriage, but without the expectation of election."

Three years later, as chestnut orchards and timber trees flourished on the Waikanae property, Ms Bunkle came under pressure to stand for Parliament again.

She was enjoying her job as a senior lecturer at Victoria University and was about to be promoted to professor.



"My memory of this period is of being very uncertain about the advisability of this course of action," the letter said.

Not least of her concerns was the financial impact of becoming an MP.

She spent several months investigating whether she could keep her Government Superannuation and how much she would be paid.

In June 1996, four months before the election, Ms Bunkle wrote to the Parliamentary Service to see whether she was eligible for the Wellington accommodation allowance if she lived at the Waikanae property. She was told that she was.

Two months later, she learned that, as a Green Party MP, she would be expected to pledge 10 per cent of her wage to the party.

"It was clear ... that my disposable income would be considerably lower as an MP than the after-tax income I was currently earning at the University. This added to my indecision about whether to nominate.

"I thought seriously about these issues because I wanted to make a responsible decision. By the time nomination date arrived I was clearly resolved that the opportunity that being in Parliament offered to work on policies to which I was committed ... outweighed the inherent insecurity or the effective drop in income."

On election to Parliament for the Alliance, Ms Bunkle divided her time between Waikanae and a townhouse she had bought in Thorndon.

Initially, the Waikanae property was not fully functional and Parliamentary Services advised Ms Bunkle that she could not properly cite it as her place of residence.

But in June 1997, the same month power was connected, she began claiming the out-of-town allowance.

She continued receiving the money until March 2000, even after signing on as a Wellington Central voter in January 1999.

Ms Bunkle, like Ms Hobbs, had by this time decided to make a pitch for the Wellington Central seat.

There was obvious political advantage in being portrayed as a local. Indeed, both women criticised the then local member, Act leader Richard Prebble, as a carpetbagger.

Mr Prebble lost the seat to Ms Hobbs. Her victory - was one of the most satisfying moments of Ms Hobbs' political career.

It had been a tough slog. From the first bruising experience in the Selwyn by-election to the brutal Wellington Central campaign, she learned that politics was not going to be easy.

The former school principal was elected to Parliament in 1996 for Labour. As a list MP, the party gave her the responsibility of watching over the top of the South Island, from Marlborough to Kaikoura.

This she did from her home in Christchurch, where the mother of two lived with her second husband, Geoff Norris.

Somewhere along the line, their relationship hit the rocks.

Toward the end of 1997, Ms Hobbs bought a property in Wellington's Aro Valley. She signed up as a voter for Wellington Central in August 1998. But she continued claiming the out-of-town money throughout her first term in Parliament.

The payments stopped upon her election as the Wellington Central MP.

For more than a year afterwards, nobody thought to mention that the taxpayer should not have been subsidising her Wellington lifestyle before 1999.

It was probably just as well. Ms Hobbs was desperately trying to the shake the image that earned her the nickname Boo Boo, the fifth Teletubby.

It was not until Ms Bunkle was tripped up by a not-so-innocent parliamentary question from National's Wyatt Creech in late December that things began to unravel.

The answer to Mr Creech's question showed that Ms Bunkle had ordered hemp curtains for a ministerial flat she was occupying.

Initial outrage over the expensive drapes developed into curiosity over why Ms Bunkle was in a ministerial residence at all when Prime Minister Helen Clark had decreed that no Wellington MPs should have one.

Ms Bunkle explained that she had moved into the flat because it was a more suitable place to care for her sick daughter.

The explanation did not satisfy the panting pack of Opposition MPs and media. Attention soon turned to the accommodation allowance.

Before long, Ms Hobbs was engulfed in the furore.

What becomes of the broken-hearted? For these two, at least, they lose their jobs.