KEY POINTS:
Where does the buck stop? Graeme Burton's victims and their families can tell you. It doesn't. Their plaintive cries that someone be held accountable for Burton's murderous rampage through the Hutt hills in early January were blithely ignored as the various inquiries flowing from his shooting spree coughed
up their findings this week.
Those in authority who might have taken some responsibility were too busy shuffling the buck on to anyone else but themselves to bother to listen to the pleas of the innocents.
The exception was the Parole Board, which displayed some mea culpa for releasing Burton from jail and looks the better for having done so.
That was in sharp contrast to the insensitivity of Barry Matthews, the chief executive of the Corrections Department, who declared "there is no blood on my hands" despite the neon warning signs displayed by Burton's behaviour while on parole.
The Parole Board, Corrections and its minister, Damien O'Connor, are all accountable. So too are the police, but to a much lesser extent. And, of course, Burton himself cannot escape blame.
However, the killing of Wainuiomata's Karl Kuchenbecker was the culmination of a bureaucratic tragedy of errors. His death means Opposition calls for resignations cannot lightly be brushed aside.
National will target O'Connor mercilessly at question time and in a likely snap debate when Parliament resumes next week.
National will also go after the Prime Minister, who effectively took over O'Connor's portfolio last Tuesday to limit the damage from the three reports dealing with Burton's parole.
Helen Clark's intervention effectively killed the story by the following day.
Furthermore, the political reality is that National's best hope of a forced resignation - either O'Connor's or Matthews' - was after Corrections was found at major fault for Liam Ashley's death in the back of a prison van last year.
No heads rolled then. It was even less likely they would roll this time, even though, as National argues, the loss of a second life compounds the case for O'Connor or Matthews to go.
This time they are not the only ones in the gun. The blame is more widely dispersed.
There is another difference. Ashley was an off-the-rails juvenile entitled to expect better from the state. Burton is an adult who must take responsibility for his actions.
Ashley died as a result of widespread "systems failures" within Corrections. In Burton's case, Matthews argues everything was largely done by the book. When it wasn't - notably when Burton's probation officer went on leave - it did not matter because by that stage the police were hunting for Burton.
Because things were done by the book, Matthews claims Corrections' supervision of Burton's parole was "well-managed".
That is a bit like praising members of the orchestra on the Titanic for sticking to the score as the ship sank. It rather misses the point. The rules and procedures followed by Corrections' staff proved to be deficient after Burton slipped back into old habits.
The department was aware the convicted killer was using standover tactics to extort money from drug-dealers around Wellington. He was issued with non-association orders.
Believing Burton now had a gun, the Armed Offenders Squad raided the flat where his parole conditions stipulated he reside. He wasn't there.
The alarm bells should have been screaming. It appears they were. The probation officer and her managers were worried enough to consider having Burton recalled to prison. But they did not think they had sufficient "substantiated" evidence to convince the Parole Board because the police would not supply the necessary affidavits as that would have compromised their informants.
So nothing was done even though Burton had likely formally breached his parole by vacating his flat. But no check was made.
The probation officer then went on leave. After that it was too late.
Despite the turn of events - and the absence of an independent investigation - Corrections somehow claimed its own report cleared it.
Moving swiftly into damage control mode, the Prime Minister did not bother defending Corrections' self-serving rationale. She instead obliterated it.
After obtaining an opinion from the Law Commission which showed Corrections had not needed proof of bad behaviour to get Burton back inside, she criticised the department for being "overly legalistic".
And she demanded that the department's supposed "zero tolerance" regime for lapses while on parole mean just that.
Clark fronted for media interviews, tactically stealing the headlines from National with her criticism of Corrections, while relegating O'Connor to the sidelines.
The view in the Beehive is that he and Justice Minister Mark Burton lack the force of personality that previously saw Phil Goff equal or better National in the never-ending debate on law and order policy.
But Clark's intervention was also partly driven by frustration within support partner NZ First about the slow progress in tidying up Corrections. It is understood NZ First, whose tough stance on law and order is a core party theme, has not ruled out seeking an inquiry into the department's operations. The party holds the casting vote on Parliament's law and order select committee.
However, it is conscious any inquiry would merely obstruct efforts to turn Corrections around.
Above all, though, Clark jumped into O'Connor's portfolio because her political antennae told her that being confronted by a gun-toting P addict is the middle-class nightmare and the episode could have accordingly seriously harmed Labour.
In brushing O'Connor aside, she might also be unintentionally rewriting the concept of individual ministerial responsibility. The old Bob Semple maxim of the minister being "responsible, but not to blame" for his or her department's failings - and therefore not obliged to resign - has now become the department being both responsible and to blame.
Clark took that view with the Qualifications Authority over the NCEA botch-up. The same applied to Transpower when the lights went out in Auckland last year. And it has happened to the Parole Board and Corrections in the Burton case.
It is further evidence of the obvious - that the concept of individual ministerial responsibility exists only in theory.
True, nine ministers have resigned during the lifetime of the current Government. But all went as a result of some personal failing not because of bungling by their officials.
When the latter occurs, ministers like O'Connor insist their job is to stay on to fix things so they do not happen again.
That said, O'Connor could surely not survive another Corrections fiasco of Ashley or Burton proportions. Then, it might be a case of three strikes and you're out.
However, that would be small consolation for the families of Burton's victims, frustrated and bewildered by the politics which leaves them the losers for the second time in two months.
