COMMENT: I think we can fairly safely conclude that when you hide behind a pillar on your way to the house so you can avoid the media, you know you're not having a good week.
And so it was with Iain Lees-Galloway yesterday at Parliament, who has ended up exactlywhere we said he would, and we said it on Monday.
The urgent review is underway as it was always going to be. The information that's triggered the review is not new - it's contradictory.
In other words the info was always out there, and the Government got stitched up, as we said they had been. Iain Lees-Galloway has had so much wool pulled over his eyes you could call him Shrek.
The information will lead to Karel Sroubek's deportation, which, of course, is where this story should have been all along.
And yet again this Government is going to have to learn the hard lesson that it is their naivety that sinks them every time.
The handling of Karel Sroubek's residency application has embarrassed the Government.
Listen to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on my programme on Tuesday: she was flaying away, digging herself deeper, defending a minister who, if she had any radar at all, would have known was landing her in a mess she didn't need.
And this is the basis of this entire story - what did they thank they would achieve? Why were they prioritising the needs of a crook? What possible good was going to come of it? Who was thanking them?
Did they not at any point join the dots, and work out that when this most incongruous of decisions got out we would go, "what the hell is this about?"
And then knowing those questions were coming, what did they think would happen next? The minister would go, 'absolute discretion, can't tell you'. And we would go 'oh that's cool, no worries?'
And what did the Prime Minister think would happen when she said "read between the lines?" Apart from, that's exactly what we would do, and when we did, and when we found out crooks lie, and this crook has lied from day one, and that the reason he got residency was because he was in danger wasn't going to ring true because he would say that, wouldn't he?
All of this was predicted on Monday on this show. And here we are Thursday, and the Government yet again is in a mess, yet again is backpedalling, yet again is reviewing, yet again is going to have to back down and do what they should have done on day one.
Lees-Galloway didn't ask questions, didn't do his job, and then doubled down and took his Government's reputation with it. They created the problem, exacerbated the problem, and got caught with their pants down because of the problem.
