Deborah Coddington: 'Honourable members' should live up to name

Ron Mark's one-finger "up yours" gesture across the debating chamber was more than a mere obscenity. It signified the nadir of sleaze into which this bricolage government has descended.

It began with the arrogance of Dr Michael Cullen's boast - we won, you lost, eat that. It continued with the worst behaviour that people my mother's age have seen politicians get away with.

There was the prime minister signing a painting she didn't paint, the speeding motorcade, cabinet ministers disgracing themselves for telling lies and for drink-driving, an MP urinating in a hotel corner then leaving the mess for staff to clean up. The list goes on an on - the outrageous spectacle of Taito Phillip Field's activities are the latest. He should have been outski, like an illegal immigrant, but the prime minister can't risk losing his vote.

And now the auditor-general, who guards the public purse, says thousands of taxpayers' dollars have been spent unlawfully on electioneering, nearly half a million of that by Labour on its so-called pledge card. So does anyone seriously believe that a code of ethics will make any difference? Isn't a minimum salary of around $130,000, paid by hard-working New Zealanders, an incentive for someone to be honourable, ethical and civil? Obviously not. Like the legal profession, they have to write themselves a code, which the Green Party wants to cover antics inside the House, as well.

To be fair, not all politicians behave badly. But those who exercise restraint do the job they're elected and paid to do rarely make the news.

For example, Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban. New Zealand has around 60,000 not-for-profit organisations, ranging from sporting to welfare organi-sations, and New Zealand would collapse without their services. But the fact that Laban is a minister outside cabinet shows how lowly Labour rates the voluntary sector.

Act's Heather Roy is another who deserves recognition for her head-down-bum-up attitude. While her leader was pursuing dancing stardom, Roy was slugging it out in the Territorials. What could have been a publicity stunt turned out to show an MP with grit, not content to be just the spokesperson for security but willing to personally undergo bootcamp's mud, madness and live grenades.

There are others - NZ First's Barbara Stewart, National's Sandra Goudie, United Future's Judy Turner, Green's Sue Bradford and Sue Kedgley. These people don't need a code of ethics. They'd sooner remove their bloomers and wave them around than give the fingers.

In Britain, the Labour Government has gone from Blair's nauseous Cool Britannia to the ignominy of the loans-for-ermine scandals, the ridicule of John Prescott seeing his nickname shift from Two Jags to Two Shags, horror stories about the Home Office, National Health Service, Ministry of Defence - entire Whitehall, it seems. To say nothing of Gordon Brown's naked and unearned ambition.

But like the Labour Government in this country, Blair has managed to spin his way through the sleaze. A recent British cartoon said it all. Inside the Cabinet Room, an official is explaining the seating plan around the table: "Cheat, liar, incompetent, cheat, liar, incompetent."

In the past, however, Britain's Tories have been as bad, so can New Zealand hope for improvement? This week, Don Brash proved he does have what it takes to be a leader with principles and spine when he insisted that if any National MP was found to have spent taxpayers' money unlawfully, then the money would be paid back. In a speech delivered in Christ-church on Monday, he said his party chooses "the harder path, the path of principle and persuasion over the path of bribery and corruption".

"Corruption is not a word you use outside Parliament without being very sure of your ground," he went on. "But I feel very safe, if rather sad, in pointing out that Helen Clark's Labour Government is quite simply the most corrupt government in New Zealand history. If we've had a government embroiled in more scandals, more cover-ups, more prima-facie cases of fraud, then at 65 I'm too young to remember it."

In taxis, bars, saleyards and around dinner tables, New Zealanders are fed up to pussy's bow with MPs' self-serving behaviour. Why should we pay our bills and our taxes, and obey the law when our representatives can just change the laws to suit themselves?

The centre-right parties are not innocent when it comes to sleaze, corruption and spin, and a select committee inquiry into election spending - call centres, for example - would prove that.

Ron Mark was reacting to a similarly filthy and sexist gesture from National's Tau Henare - but only Mark was caught on camera. If National wants to win the next election, it would do well to pull its own dodgy bodgies into line, ensure its potential political partners do likewise - and promise that every politician who takes his or her green leather seat in the debating chamber deserves, without needing a code of ethics, the title they automati-cally attain on election: Honourable Member.