KEY POINTS:
So, finally, justice of sorts for Madeleine Setchell. However, the resignation of David Benson-Pope will not compensate for her losing her job or the discomfort that someone in the business of public relations must feel at becoming the news rather than shaping it.
Neither will she want to
be forever tagged with the career-inhibiting label of "the public servant who brought down a minister".
That is not true anyway. David Benson-Pope destroyed himself. Had he given a full account of what happened - when Setchell's dismissal from her senior communications role in the Ministry for the Environment for having a potential conflict of interest through her relationship with a National Party staffer was starting to get political legs - he would probably have escaped with a telling-off from the Prime Minister.
However, Benson-Pope once again failed to be upfront about what happened, preferring to stall, obfuscate and mislead everyone about his clumsy interference in the ministry's attempts to resolve Setchell's potential conflict of interest.
The minister's credibility quickly became the paramount issue.
The episode has been a carbon copy of his behaviour on the two previous occasions he got into hot water. The first centred on assault allegations when he taught at Dunedin's Bayfield High School. Then some months later he got into trouble for denying parents had laid complaints against him over the so-called "shower block incident" during a school camp in the late 1990s.
What is breathtaking is that the three examples of his career-killing political mismanagement occurred within a time-frame of a little over two years. He seemed incapable of learning that in fudging, ducking and diving to save his political neck, he was simultaneously putting a noose around it.
His departure is also justice of sorts for the public service.
His forced resignation after the exposure of the meddling by him and his political adviser, Steve Hurring, in a staffing matter might enhance the political neutrality of the public service after initially putting that neutrality in serious question.
Those who think the furore surrounding Setchell's dismissal has been an over-the-top example of Wellington's chattering classes dancing on the head of a constitutional pin miss the point.
Not only has a public servant been treated in a truly deplorable fashion, the political interference by Benson-Pope and Hurring would have set a dangerous precedent had they got away with it.
That is not to say it would have seen open slather for politicians to use back-door channels to put undue pressure on departmental chief executives.
However, the interference and the weak response from the State Services Commission has produced something not far short of a crisis of confidence among public servants in their supposed public service watchdog.
Statements such as the one yesterday from deputy commissioner Iain Rennie, claiming that Setchell's removal "should have no impact" on her ability to get employment on merit elsewhere in the public sector, are regarded as a bad joke.
Likewise the assurance from the Ministry for the Environment's chief executive, Hugh Logan, that he would have explored Setchell's potential conflict of interest even had Benson-Pope declared he was happy to work with her.
Political neutrality is a two-way street. State sector employees are required to leave their personal opinions at home and be loyal servants of the Government of the day. In return, they are entitled to expect to be protected from meddling politicians.
On the latter score, the commission failed miserably, seemingly bending over backwards not to upset the Beehive when it should have publicly condemned Hurring's call to Logan, which tipped the chief executive off to Setchell's relationship with John Key's chief press secretary, Kevin Taylor.
The commission has since been embarrassed by Benson-Pope's admission that he told Logan that he was likely to be "less free and frank" at meetings where Setchell was in the room. This incriminating statement was absent from the commission's initial report on the Setchell affair, presumably because Logan did not tell the acting commissioner, Rennie.
Logan was in a difficult position, given that he did not wish to damage his relationship with Benson-Pope. But the admission confirmed the report was the whitewash the Opposition said it was.
Even worse, the commission then agreed that the ministry institute a register of actual or potential conflicts of interest for existing senior staff and for those who might be recruited to such positions.
This is the not-so-thin end of a very big wedge. It would inevitably spread to other departments and to lower levels in the bureaucracy. Given public servants err on the side of caution, it would inevitably see some people blocked from the public service and bar promotion for others already inside.
Those backing such a register pointed to a recently released report by the Auditor-General which mooted such "interest registers" and, furthermore, appeared to rule out the notion that the interests of one partner in a relationship could not be partitioned off from, and were instead common to, the relationship. This has been waved around as somehow giving an official stamp of approval to Setchell's dismissal.
The idea of interest registers for public servants has horrified the politicians it was designed to impress.
Peter Dunne, whose electorate is home to thousands of public servants, slammed the idea as "McCarthyist", while the Prime Minister and State Services Minister Annette King have expressed strong reservations.
Not surprisingly, by yesterday, the commission was reversing away from the concept at a rate of knots, with Rennie saying he would not recommend any "wholesale adoption" of such registers across the state sector.
Whether the Setchell affair will be career-threatening for Logan is hard to say, given the commission's Vatican-like approach to the appointment and reappointment of chief executives. However, his handling of it has left the Beehive unimpressed.
Logan argues the Setchell case was highly unusual. Both Setchell and Taylor would have been in senior positions advising their political masters on the same things - sustainability, climate change, emissions trading and so forth - which are at the forefront of Labour's agenda.
He says he was worried about how this potential conflict of interest would be regarded not just by politicians, but by the wider community. This is bunkum. The only people worried were Benson-Pope and Hurring. They made assumptions about Setchell's professionalism and her politics.
Above all, it never seemed to occur to them - or Logan - that Setchell would be the last person who would leak something because she would be the first person to have the finger pointed at her.
