Should Labour be calling Carter nuts?

Phil Goff said on Q+A:

PAUL Regarding Mr Carter, is it your belief he is unwell?

PHIL I think he is unwell, and for that reason, I don’t want to make a lot of personal comments about Chris. He needs some privacy. He needs some time. But the truth is, he is gone from the Labour caucus.

And Trevor Mallard has called Carter “unbalanced”.

Adam Smith blogs on this:

Adam does not like Chris Carter, he cannot fathom how the guy survived for so long, other than by being Clark’s poodle.

Yet despite that, he finds the rush by Labour and its fellow travellers to denigrate Carter by saying he, Carter, is unbalanced nauseating and repellent. The suggestions that Carter is mentally unhinged are not an acceptable way of seeking to deal with the issue, in fact such suggestions are being used to obscure questions raised by Carter on the grounds that he does not know what he is dong.

For a party that takes PC to extremes and would jump on anybody else who sought to suggest mental illness was the cause of an unpopular stance, as being insensitive to sufferers from such illness, the unedifying spectacle of senior Labour members queuing up to explain away Carter’s statements as those of someone who is ‘unbalanced’ is singularly repellent.

If Adam was a Labour voter he would be very seriously pondering the moral compass of a political party that sought to divert attention from some critical questions raised by a senior MP by claiming that said MP was mentally ill.

I think talk by Labour about being unbalanced, unwell and talking about psychiatrists is rather nasty, while trying to appear kind.

Certainly what Chris Carter has done is incredibly stupid from a political point of view, and I think he is acting more from emotion than from logical planning.

But there is a big difference between someone acting off emotion, and being called “unwell” by their leader.