Fran O'Sullivan: Dodging Field fiasco just not good enough

If Prime Minister Helen Clark is relying on a slothful media and the Opposition soon losing interest in the scandal du jour that's rocking her Government, then she is miscalculating.

Queen's Counsel Noel Ingram's report into the Taito Phillip Field affair is not an exoneration of the Labour MP's shocking misuse of Thai immigrants as initial reports suggested.

Ingram, hands tied by the absurdly narrow terms of reference dictated to him by Clark in the first place, has nevertheless provided a compelling case for the appropriately armed investigators to make further probes into the his actions.

If Field is forced out of Parliament - as National hopes to do through its pursuit of a Parliamentary Privileges Committee inquiry - the Clark coalition's narrow majority will come under pressure.

The more important issue is the integrity of the political system. Central to any further independent investigation into Field's actions is whether he breached the Secret Commissions Act by not disclosing to Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor that Sunan Siriwan was working on his Samoan house when he personally pressed the case for Siriwan and his partner to get work permits after they had been denied refugee status.

That's what Ingram is really getting at when he suggests Clark should look further into why Field took no steps to ensure Siriwan was formally paid. Ingram found he was given about 200 tala ($111) a week by Mrs Field's son in Samoa.

As O'Connor confirmed to Ingram, he gave a higher priority to the immigration applications put forward by his parliamentary colleagues than those of private citizens. It's hard to believe O'Connor would have acceded to Field's request if he had known the critical piece of information that the affected Thai "immigrant" was providing cheap labour to dolly-up Field's relatively palatial Samoan house.

But O'Connor approved the application - in circumstances where top officials told Ingram they would not have done so - and Field had his house tiled while the process chugged on.

That Field derived personal benefit from his association with the Thai workers is clear cut. What needs to be properly decided is whether the benefit was a a quid pro quo for arranging immigration approvals, as National alleges, or not, as Field continues to claim.

That's the crux of the matter. But on this and other quite disturbing issues raised in the report, Ingram did not have the powers to compel all potential witnesses to front up and tell the truth.

Then there was the apparent attempt by the Field family to stop affected workers from talking to Ingram - which, if the inquiry had been put on a criminal footing, would be seen as a clear attempt to defeat the course of justice.

Then there are the apparent breaches of New Zealand employment laws which have been raised by Ingram's finding that some Thai immigrants who worked on upgrading Field's Auckland properties - thus increasing their value on a rising property market - appeared to have been underpaid. And there is the question whether the MP deducted PAYE from these "wages" in the first place,.

Given this minefield you might expect the appropriate authorities to launch their own inquiries. Not so. Police and the Labour Department have ruled out investigations of their own into the serious issues raised by the Ingram Report unless they receive a formal complaint from affected parties, complete with evidence of criminal behaviour - which is not the test usually applied. And key Government officials - some of whom were questioned by Ingram - are hiding behind the skirts of their communications people instead of making themselves available for journalists' queries.

The Labour Department - which is supposed to ensure an equitable working environment and should surely have an interest in whether Thai workers were being exploited as cheap labour - told me they were "not doing anything. There had been no complaint". Council of Trade Unions boss Ross Wilson said the CTU would not be taking up the Thai workers' case.

He said the Labour Department now had the power to launch investigations without having to wait for a complaint. Why doesn't it do so?

My attempts to get some sense from the Immigration Service resulted in a referral back to the Labour Department.

Police national headquarters told me: "We've certainly not opened an investigation". Again, nothing would happen without a formal complaint.

National MP Bill English put it this way in Parliament: "Can the Prime Minister not see the difference between allegations made about members of Parliament in a general sense, and highly specific information contained in the Ingram report, which suggests, if not describes, paying workers below the minimum wage and not paying PAYE or GST - actions regarded by her Government as exploitative and potentially illegal for every citizen of New Zealand except Taito Phillip Field."

That's what Clark is avoiding as she ducks and weaves her way around the obvious deduction that the only reason Field is off the hook for now is that he used his MP's letterhead - not his ministerial letterhead - when pushing for immigration approvals.

Contrast Clark's shameful attempts to keep the issue off the front page with that of former Act NZ leader Richard Prebble in the Donna Awatere-Huata affair. Let's say straight up that nothing in the Field inquiry smacks of Awatere-Huata's criminal fraud with public funds. The parallel is the way one political leader, Prebble, was prepared to take the hit on his own party's popularity by insisting due process be followed, and Clark's attempt to bury the Field affair to ensure her own party's majority is not impinged.

Speaker of the House Margaret Wilson faces the biggest political test of her career as she weighs whether to accept National Leader Don Brash's request for a Privileges Committee Inquiry. The issue is clear cut. Wilson must act for the integrity of Parliament, not in the interests of the political party on whose list she was elected.