KEY POINTS:
David Benson-Pope's reaction to the appointment of Madeleine Setchell to a senior communications role at the Environment Ministry was purely visceral.
Anybody who's become a bit punch-drunk, even a Cabinet minister, can take only so much before they strike back at their persecutors in a personal way. That's
what is really at stake in the Setchell affair.
I'm not surprised the Cabinet minister lost all sense of rationality when confronted with the fact that he would have to talk high-level strategy on policies at the centrepiece of the Government's third-term agenda with the live-in partner of a National spin-doctor, someone who would inevitably be tasked with finding (yet again) the cruel words used to puncture his hapless political persona every time he stuffed up.
Benson-Pope has been on the political ropes more often than not in the past couple of years.
When a police investigation into allegations that he bullied students in his teaching days and watched girls showering at a school camp concluded he'd crossed the line, but no action would be taken given the historic nature of the claims, I went to Parliament to watch question-time.
The nature of the parliamentary attacks was ugly. National's Judith Collins and Act's Rodney Hide performed a tag-team act as they tried to destroy his credibility. Collins accused him of being a "pervert". Hide added "pathological bully and liar".
I watched Benson-Pope physically reel, his face grow puffy, and his facial twitch threaten to morph into Tourette's syndrome as he fought to stop what appeared to be a full-on, hyperventilation attack.
I must say, I feared then that the Cabinet minister's physical reserves would be so compromised by having to fight off the unceasing attacks from his opponents that he might suffer a fatal heart attack.
Benson-Pope did manage to get through that onslaught but he's since had to weather a nasty personal campaign against him.
I'm sure Helen Clark, whose own husband was the subject of a vile rumour campaign last year, would have had some sympathy for the position Benson-Pope found himself in during the past 12 months.
She knows what it is like having to fend attacks from opponents who are skilled at leaving no fingerprints.
So how was Benson-Pope to feel - really feel - when Setchell came into his Beehive office?
Was he to accept at face value that the communications manager's integrity was such that she would never indulge in any pillow-talk with her partner Kevin Taylor over the policies that Labour was planning?
When he saw television shots of Taylor smirking in the background next time National landed a personal body blow on him, was he not supposed to (ever) connect dots?
On the surface, Benson-Pope should have done just that, given Setchell's track record of professionalism.
But asking that of Benson-Pope given the political track-record, was fairyland stuff. Setchell may have been committed to public service ideals but Taylor's job is purely political. And this Cabinet minister was one of National's declared targets.
Benson-Pope's admission to Environment Secretary Hugh Logan that he could not be free and frank in Setchell's presence is understandable, given the circumstances. It was simply the truth.
Setchell had to go if Benson-Pope was to perform his role without succumbing to paranoia every time she came into the room.
Where Benson-Pope let himself down was by trying to perform a cover-up. If on Day One he'd said bluntly what had really happened he would have been accused of political interference, but he would probably have weathered the storm, as most New Zealanders would have quickly cottoned on to the all-too-human reasons behind his visceral response.
But instead he obfuscated. That is ultimately what cost Benson-Pope his Cabinet warrant yesterday - not the way in which he supposedly compromised his office.
We can cloak what happened in the Setchell affair with all sorts of niceties about how the principles of public service neutrality had been compromised by the tete-a-tete that Benson-Pope held with Hugh Logan.
But this is not the first time the so-called neutrality of the public service has been questioned since Labour took power.
In reality, National doesn't trust the public service to maintain the convention of political neutrality in all circumstances either.
Former Foreign Minister Phil Goff brandished in Parliament notes made by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs' official into conversations between former National leader Don Brash and some visiting Republican senators.
MFAT chief executive Simon Murdoch did not walk the plank over that breach. But National politicians do not any longer have MFAT officials in the room when carrying out sensitive talks with high-level foreign diplomatic contacts.
That Benson-Pope sought to protect himself from what he probably thought was a possible viper in his own nest is simply par for the course in Wellington these days.
