Mike Hosking: Deputy Police Commissioner Wally Haumaha and the witch-hunt into his appointment

Deputy Police Commissioner Wally Haumaha now faces an inquiry into his appointment. Photo / File

At first blush one can only conclude that Wally Haumaha is in some serious trouble, as regards his new job as Deputy Police Commissioner.

After all, why else are they investigating? What are they investigating?
What they're investigating is whether the comments he made all those years ago around Louise Nicholas were part of the appointment process.

Because only one of a couple of things can be at play here.

One, they weren't, so therefore the people in charge of filling the role are at fault for not passing on the appropriate material to Police Minister Stuart Nash before he signed it off.

Or two: they were and it got signed off anyway.

You can't tell me the current commissioner didn't know because he did, you could argue Stuart Nash should have known but didn't.

Or - here's where it gets a bit tricky - did everyone know, and decided that time had passed, remorse had been offered, and we all deserve a second chance?
And if it's that, why have an investigation?

All this leads us back to the trouble Haumaha appears to be in - the Government is looking for an excuse to get rid of him.

The inference is someone, somewhere along the line should have run the highlighter through that particular part of his career. And at the very least, if not culling him early in the process, someone should have alerted the Commissioner and certainly the minister, who appears not to have been told.

But then we get to the bit the current Government - the very ones looking into all this - tend to favour on past indiscretions, and indiscretions a great deal larger than Haumaha's.

Things like criminal activity, they favour rehabilitation. They favour second chances, they favour a new start.

Three strikes was gone remember? Andrew Little tells us punishment doesn't work, rehab does.

Has Wally Haumaha not been rehabbed? It is claimed he's admitted wrong, repented and gone on to do good work in a reformed and transformed police service of the 21st century.

Is that good enough for the people Wally arrests but not for Wally himself?

Remembering that although what Wally said was repugnant and wrong, it wasn't actually a crime.

Even if you accept that the police should be above the rest of us in terms of standards, are we saying the sort of wrong Wally committed is irreparable?

Say it, and that haunts you forever, is that our rule?

And given we all make mistakes, and the best we can hope for is to repent, put it behind us, and in a productive and positive way move on.

How are the indiscretions measured? There are thousands of Haumaha-type incidents, is every one of those individuals damned forever? No promotion? No breaks? No opportunities?

The very premise of our system is we learn from our mistakes and wrongs and are given freedom to make amends.

If this investigation is a witch-hunt because they believe they've made a mistake that would make them, given their three strikes thinking, hypocrites.