Since admitting to telling porkies to welfare authorities about her living circumstances when she was a solo mum, she's been hoisted by her own petard. (Photo \ Getty Images)

The Soap Box: Turei's behaviour has no place in politics

Opinion

Author: Barry Soper,
Publish Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017, 5:59AM

Just when you thought you'd heard it all, whammo, The Greens are turning red.

At least two of them, their two old white males Kennedy Graham and David Clendon, have effectively resigned from the Party and Parliament because they find it unpalatable working alongside their co-leader, welfare fraudster Metiria Turei.

Since admitting to telling porkies to welfare authorities about her living circumstances when she was a solo mum, she's been hoisted by her own petard.

Turei made what she clearly thought was a major concession last week for her admission of fraud by saying she wouldn't be seeking a Cabinet position in a Labour led Government, even though the party had been told just hours earlier that she wouldn't be getting one anyway.

The impoverished life of a beneficiary certainly gave The Greens a lift in the opinion polls to 15 percent at at the expense of Labour on 24 percent and at the expense of their leader Andrew Little who impaled himself on a pole.

Then there was the revelation that she'd registered in 1993 on the electoral roll at the father of her daughter's home because she wanted to vote for a friend who was running for Parliament in that electorate. But she herself was standing in an adjoining seat so she was sacrificing her own vote for her friend. Yeah well, something about that didn't gel, but it is what it is but it doesn't smell right.

Certainly it had Graham and Clendon holding their noses and the stench will now impact on The Greens who are publicly now spinning that the two were looking for an excuse to quit the party because they didn't get the high enough list placings they were expecting.

The bombshell exploded it seems before even Turei's sidekick James Shaw knew about it, but he's since been spinning like a top, telling us The Greens have such a high calibre and energetic list of candidates that they'll now have a better chance to get into Parliament.

Shaw made the understatement of the latest political explosion by saying he was disappointed by his two MPs' decision but he wished them well.

Turei's behaviour since her sensational admission of fraud, and protecting those who continue to commit it, has no place in politics. She, like up to a thousand beneficiaries who are prosecuted for welfare fraud each year, should now be facing the legal consequences rather than continuing to co-lead a party and have any credibility as an alternative Government.