Public asked to hold fire over Benson-Pope claims

The Government mounted a cautious defence of suspended Cabinet minister David Benson-Pope yesterday, calling for judgment to be suspended into allegations he mistreated pupils.

But as support rolled in from some students of the former Bayfield High School teacher, another former student last night appeared to back a claim that Mr Benson-Pope had stuffed a tennis ball into a pupil's mouth.

An unnamed man on TVNZ's Close Up programme last night said he was in a class in which Mr Benson-Pope put a tennis ball into the mouth of student Phil Weaver in the 1980s.

He said Mr Weaver "was laughing to start with" but was probably a bit annoyed.

"But having said that it, certainly wouldn't be something he would be lying awake dreaming about."

Mr Benson-Pope has denied the allegations - which included giving a student a bleeding nose - in Parliament and stood aside as Associate Education Minister on Monday pending an inquiry.

TV3, which has spoken to five former students, said four of them were willing to give evidence to an inquiry.

If it is found that Mr Benson- Pope deliberately misled Parliament, he would be expected to resign, although the results of an inquiry might not be completed before September 24, by which time an election must be held.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen told Parliament yesterday "there are plenty of consequences that flow from possible outcomes of that inquiry".

But he also hoped Mr Benson-Pope's accusers in Parliament, Act leader Rodney Hide and National's Judith Collins, would have the grace to apologise "should the inquiry find the allegations are not demonstrably true".

Te Tai Tokerau MP Dover Samuels told the Herald: "What goes around comes around".

The issue had to be seen in perspective and he said when he was at school, he was caned on the bare buttocks for speaking Maori.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said in Hamilton yesterday that people needed to be aware there were two sides to every story.

She was still taking advice from Solicitor-General Terence Arnold on the nature of the inquiry.

She could not say how long it would take but it would look at all complaints, including any still coming forward.

Mr Benson-Pope received plenty of support yesterday from former pupils and teachers.

One, Paul Cox, said some of the student accusers had been part of a larger bullying group and that bullying had been rife at the school.

He could not believe what was being said about "one of the best teachers there".

"Benson-Pope is always one of those teachers you talk about and say he was one of the ones that got you through your school years."

Education Minister Trevor Mallard said although corporal punishment was practised in both the schools he had taught at, Wellington South Intermediate and Te Kuiti High School, he did not use it himself.

"Everyone racks their brains about these things when events like this occur and I cannot think of anything which is causing me concern."

A lot of things happened in his teaching days that would not happen now.

For example, he said, he took children for remedial reading alone in a store cupboard at the back of a classroom, to save the child from embarrassment.

"It was done in there with the door shut.

"One would never do that in these days.

"The views have changed around the balance between privacy and threats and allegations to teachers."

National deputy leader Gerry Brownlee, a former teacher at St Bedes and Ellesmere, said that in the 15 years he taught, he hoped the vast majority of his former 1500 former pupils found it a positive experience.

"But I guess in that number, there are always going to be one or two who didn't perhaps appreciate you for one reason or another."

He was not afraid that the Government might be compiling a dirt file on him.

- additional reporting Nicola Boyes