John Armstrong: Benson-Pope is in a heap of trouble

Richard Nixon had to leave the White House because the cover-up of Watergate was worse than the original crime.

In similar fashion, David Benson-Pope's deliberate misrepresentation of the police report into accusations he assaulted pupils while teaching in Dunedin threatens to undermine his credibility more than the allegations themselves.

His credibility as a Cabinet minister was always at stake after he told Parliament in May that those allegations were "ridiculous" and the police began their inquiry.

As it is, the subsequent findings released yesterday inevitably raise questions about his denials to Parliament, giving fresh grist to those who argue he misled the House.

However, at the very time he should be playing everything by the book, his credibility is being destroyed by the relentless spin coming from him and his Beehive office as they try to put a favourable gloss on the police report which simply cannot be justified.

As yet, there is no real whiff of dead political meat. But the vultures are circling.

By trying to bury the report with a snow job on its contents, he has jeopardised public opinion which until now appears, by and large, to have stood behind him - and which probably would have continued to do so if allowed to make its own judgment on the police report without him putting such a spin on it.

Furthermore, he has handed the Opposition all the arguments it needs to call for his sacking and, at the same time, made it extremely difficult for the Prime Minister to defend him when she is questioned in Parliament today.

By way of example, he claims the police files "reveal" that the majority of those in the fourth form class at Bayfield High School who would have witnessed the alleged jamming of a tennis ball into a pupil's mouth back his belief that the incident never happened.

What the police found was that 15 out of the 29 class members could not remember the incident - which is not the same thing as Mr Benson-Pope is claiming.

How will the Prime Minister square that?

And how will she defend Mr Benson-Pope's highly selective quoting of the affected pupil's testimony to police?

Helen Clark's inclination is to tough it out.

Parliament has less than two weeks to run and Labour will be gambling that the fuss will die over the summer break.

Expressing confidence in her minister at her post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, she faced a barrage of questions about his fitness to stay in the Cabinet given the report's findings that there was sufficient evidence to put the assault allegations before a court.

In response, she repeatedly cited the police's decision not to prosecute the minister.

And, in the end, the Opposition's demands that he go are always going to run into that brick wall.

The only way around it is to try to get a privileges committee hearing to determine whether he misled Parliament. But the Speaker has already ruled out such a hearing and Parliament's rules make it difficult to reopen the case.

That still leaves questions about Mr Benson-Pope's credibility and his political judgment. Much hangs on how he behaves in Parliament this afternoon.

He has a major problem. His version of what the police report says is hugely at odds with its actual contents. Does he maintain his pretence or finally acknowledge the reality?

Either way, he is going to face charges of deception and be subject to intense ridicule. It is going to be a long afternoon for the member for Dunedin South.