Phil Heatley - Pushed or shoved?
Phil Heatley resigns as minister
Phil Heatley has resigned from his housing and fisheries portfolios after this week apologising to John Key for misusing a ministerial credit card. At a media conference today, Mr Heatley said he had offered his resignation to Prime Minister John Key this morning, and the resignation was accepted. "It's been a privilege to serve the people of New Zealand as a Cabinet minister in this National Government but I believe I've failed to live up my own standard and for that and for that I'm embarrassed and immensely sorry," Mr Heatley said. "The decision today comes after I've had a closer look at my ministerial credit card expenses covering the past 18 months.
Pushed or shoved? Both? John Key said at the beginning of the week that what Phil did wasn't a sackable offense - today it is? This was my favourite bit from the Stuff article...
This morning's press conference lasted just five minutes, with an emotional Mr Heatley reading a prepared statement and answering only a handful of questions before staff led him from the room.
...heh, staff led him from the room, smells like there is blood in the water here, he's referred himself to the Auditor-General, that's as close to political suicide as one gets in NZ.
I think there is a second shoe waiting to drop here.
posted by Bomber @ 11:27 am
6 comments
6 Comments:
surely Brownlee must also go. Same offence.... just a matter of scale.
I'm going for "jumped" rather than "pushed", if only because Key had to cancel a whole day's worth of appointments in Chrischurch to come back to deal with this. I suspect Heatley told him he wanted to go, Key said sleep on it, and Heatley thought he should go anyway.
I'm not sure if it's relevant in this case, but I sometimes get a feeling that a person might be not that unhappy about losing a huge workload, and popping off back to the relatively sane hours a backbencher does (around 70-80hrs per week), especially if the person has a tribe of ankle-biters who miss their mum or dad.
Crisis management 'Key styles!' Real smooth.
Right on the money Johnno.
Can we expect all those highly principled Clark bashers: Hydes, anono-trolls, exclusive B's et al to begin screaming "corruption!!" just as they did over speeding tickets, and artowrk signatures?
I just wonder what poor wee Phil spotted on his credit card account when he stayed up all night going over the whole 18 months. Ministers don't go unless they know they have to.
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