Barry Soper: Triple trouble causing headache for leaders across political spectrum

COMMENT: Parliament's become preoccupied with three blokes who've caused a headache for leaders across the political spectrum.

Two of them will be easier to dispense with, they're likely to be fish and chip paper within the next few weeks, if not sooner.

The third, National's Jami-Lee Ross, remains on mental health leave but while he's not seen around the place at the moment, he's most certainly been heard. His latest recording of his old leaders Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett is damning for both of them.

In essence he was being offered a carrot (before going feral) of possible promotion next year if he did what he was told. Their action indicated women at the centre of allegations against him were secondary to keeping him in his place, and that was to be seen and not heard.

Bennett, who initially opened the bedroom door by telling us Ross' behaviour was unbecoming of a married MP which led to a flood of anonymous complaints, was asked whether that same behaviour was acceptable for the female married MP he'd had an affair with. She turned on her heel and hissed that she's got no comments to make on anyone else's business.

Her leader certainly had plenty to say later in Parliament's bear pit though about one of the Government's headaches - Karel Sroubek - and how a threatened family was driven into a witness protection programme by him and two Hells Angels associates.

Sroubek's a name that Jacinda Ardern clearly wishes she'd never heard of and by week's end she hopes to have him off the Government's books, although he'll remain on the taxpayers' ledger until he's released from his drug-smuggling sentence of almost six years and sent back to the Czech Republic.

And the final headache the Beehive hopes to dispense with this week is top cop Wally Haumaha and whether he should ever have been promoted to the Deputy Police Commissioner role. The inquiry into the process used to appoint him was ordered by Winston Peters when he was filling in for Ardern.

The inquiry was mired in controversy even before it got underway when Haumaha's unrealised political aspirations with New Zealand First were revealed. Former board member of the party Tracey Martin was put in charge of putting the inquiry in place which led to accusations of an inside job.

But she's risen above that and the inquiry into the process, that saw Haumaha at the top of police management who was dismissive about rape allegations against his cop friends by Louise Nicholas, is now complete and will be released any day now.

In a separate inquiry allegations of bullying against Haumaha are being considered by the police complaints authority.

So while the Government's likely to get rid of its headaches, National's migraine shows no signs of diminishing.