Mike Hosking: Only one possible solution to immigration cock-up

Opinion

So the key question here, is just how spectacularly bad does it have to get before Lees-Galloway falls on his sword? Or just how spectacularly bad does it have to get before Jacinda Ardern realises she simply has to do the right thing by all of us and get rid of him?

Having been told a week and a half ago by Ardern to "read between the lines", and having done so, it's done nothing to provide light as to why a catastrophically bad decision was made, but everything as to why it was the cock-up it looked like from day one.

Did we or did we not say 10 days ago this stinks, it's not right, there is no logic and this ultimately will end badly for the Government?

And almost every day there has been something new, and importantly something bad for the Government. There has not be one single skerrick of evidence, or revelation, that has led us any closer to understanding why the decision that was made, was made.

And now to end the week, the admission, perhaps the most damning admission of all from the minister himself. He made the decision within an hour and didn't read the whole file. Having spent the past week trying to pin this on officials, we now know another piece of the truth.

He not only didn't join the dots, didn't have the wherewithal to see the potential political carnage of doing what he was about to do, but he didn't even do his job, even if he read all he had in front of him, he didn't get the stuff we've got.

That seals without a shred of doubt now the fact that so much of this is was just never supposed to happen, if it had been in the hands of anyone who was competent, or even slightly alert.

The Prime Minister admitted this week, in yet another sign of naivety, that she learned of the decision through the media.

So in summation what do we have? A false passport, drug smuggling, fear of death that wasn't, trips to the republic despite fear of death, a protection order, the parole board that thinks he's a liar, the extradition order from the republic, the Immigration Department trying to boot him out.

And now, the decision within an hour, and the admission even the stuff the department had provided wasn't fully read.

I repeat just how spectacularly bad and blatantly wanting do you need this to be to have the self respect of mea culpa-ing this and falling on your sword?

Or perhaps more importantly, if the Prime Minister is to shake her image of being hopelessly soft in these matters, just what is it she needs to see before she sorts this the way it should have been sorted now two weeks back?