Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Politics is a funny old business and produces some strange ideas but rarely lasting, innovative policies.
We'll be on the lookout for those in the final weeks in the lead-up to the election.
But this week's had its fair share of the weird and wacky.
Weird is the ongoing business
of Metiria Turei and her fessing up to benefit fraud and taking umbrage about being questioned on it, particularly about giving birth being a mother's choice, which has nothing to do with to do with denying the right of the poor to have babies, as she claimed.
And questions about others she knows of committing benefit fraud and her astonishment at the notion of dobbing them in.
It's fair conversations between politicians and constituents should be treated in confidence but in my experience politicians stop a conversation, avoiding the detail if an offence is likely to be revealed, but usually go on to offer advice.
Turei exploited her knowledge of others doing what she did which, whether she likes it or not, offereing them encouragement to continue breaking the law, for a lawmaker that's inexcusable.
It's not as though in her time of welfare abuse she wouldn't have had access to other assistance anyway, the grandmother of her child is former Labour MP and assistant Parliamentary Speaker Anne Hartley.
And on another crisis the cry inevitably went up: What's the Government going to do about it?
