Editorial: Field lucky to stay in Parliament

Opinion

Corruption is foreign to this country. The probity of our public officials is more apparent to foreigners than to us because we take it for granted. So much so that when a New Zealander is accused of deriving unauthorised personal gain from a public position we hesitate to call it corruption, preferring a gentler term, "conflict of interest". Our tendency is to suppose the office holder careless, naive, unwise or uninformed, never simply venal.

The Prime Minister maintains that tradition in her response to the report of Dr Noel Ingram, QC, on his long and costly inquiry into accusations against a member of her Government, Taito Phillip Field. The Mangere MP had work done on his houses by people who had sought his help for their immigration applications. Dr Ingram, having spent 10 months at a cost to the country of half a million dollars, can find no evidence of a "conflict of interest" though he questions the MP's conduct in several cases.

Mr Field, a Cabinet minister at the time, asked his colleague, the Associate Immigration Minister, Damien O'Connor, to look favourably on the case of Thais Sunan Siriwan and his partner, who were seeking work permits. A month later, Mr Siriwan went to Samoa and did some extensive tiling of a house Mr Field owns there. He lived with Field family members who gave him money, about $111 a week. A few months later, after Mr Field made further approaches to the Associate Minister, Mr O'Connor granted the work permits.

Mr Ingram remains concerned that Mr Field did not tell Mr O'Connor of the work the applicant was doing for him privately, nor did he ensure that the tiler was being formally paid, or stop him working. Perhaps the informal arrangement seemed fine to Mr Field at the time and possibly he saw no need to mention it to the minister. Mr O'Connor told the inquiry he relied on MPs' honesty and gave preference to cases brought by them rather than paid immigration consultants.

The inquiry heard that a further four Thai immigration applicants worked on Mr Field's house in Samoa but they would not talk to Dr Ingram and Mr and Mrs Field gave conflicting evidence about that group's activities. Likewise, the inquiry has clearly been frustrated by Mr Field's responses to claims that he had work done by immigration applicants on several houses he owns in New Zealand.

It would take an inquiry armed with more power than Dr Ingram possessed to get to the bottom of these and other concerns, but the Prime Minister sees no need for it. She is unimpressed by Field's judgment and he will not return to the Cabinet. But he might count himself lucky to remain in Parliament. The privileges committee of the House might yet have the last word on Mr Field's suitability to retain his seat.

If the MP's conduct is of concern, so, perhaps more so, is that of Samoan leaders in Auckland who have rallied around him. They see him as a hard-working MP who thought he was doing the right thing by giving work to people he was trying to help. They may be right but there is no excuse for a failure to ensure that the work was properly paid and could not be construed as a gift for services rendered. MPs are well paid from the public purse to do their job without fear or favour. When they take up a constituent's problem they do so on its merit, not for reciprocal benefit.

The Ingram inquiry has not so much cleared Mr Field as given him the benefit of its failure to find out very much.