October 20, 2009 3:00pm by David Farrar

Tackling Labour MPs on Field

I had a long debate with Phil Goff last night about this particular matter when he came to speak at my Hall of Residence.

Good on Shaun for raising the issue. I urge everyone who meets a Labour MP to do the same. Think of it as tough love – the aim is to get them to abandon their no comment policy. A party which had one of its MPs (and Minister at the time) found guilty of corruption should not be allowed to escape without any comment on whether they agree he was guilty, whether they condemn what he did, and whether they regret defending him.

He feels that he did not know enough about the situation at the time (bollocks in my opinion)

Now this is bollocks. The Ingram Report laid out Field’s conduct in massive detail. If a Labour MP claims they did not know enough at the time, ask themif they read the Ingram Report, and if not why not. If they did read it, then ask them how could they approve of a strategy to defend Field and praise him as a hard working MP, after reading the Ingram Report.

and then he later stated after many questions from me [i.e. there is a massive difference between accepting a decision and approving of a decision, and why hasn’t Labour stated that they approve of the High Court decision], and his response (again him not getting to the point) is that at the time, they did not think Taito had done anything hugely wrong.

Well this is interesting. Phil Goff presumably read the Ingram Report, and didn’t think it disclosed Field had done anything wrong.

Now I read that report carefully. I blogged a list of 44 damning facts revealed by Ingram.

And even putting aside the illegal stuff, Phil Goff is saying that at the time he did not think having immigrants work on properties for around $2 an hour was “hugely wrong”. Let’s remember that when Labour call for the minimum wage to go up.

So we now know that Phil Goff didn’t think Taito had done anything wrong despite the Ingram Report. This explains why they won’t apologise for defending him. It does still leave the question as to whether or not Labour now agrees that Field did anything wrong. Not a single Labour MP has said on the record they think Field was corrupt, let alone they are ashamed of what he did