Kerre Woodham: King not as bad as Mallard

Annette King has been the pulse of Labour's otherwise corpse-like caucus but her comments this week condemning Paula Bennett for unleashing beneficiary-bashers struck an off-key note.

Paula Bennett, the Minister for Social Development, announced this week her department would audit the top 50 recipients of state benefits, all of whom are getting more than $1000 a week. King said the minister had given people carte blanche to vent their spleens against "bludgers" on talkback radio.

Point of order, Annette. I had a far harder job reining in the Maori-bashers than I did the beneficiary-bashers, thanks to Trevor Mallard's ill-advised rant against Justice Simon France.

Justice France was the sentencing judge in the Janet Moses manslaughter trial and he declined to send five members of Moses' family to jail, saying the group didn't intend to harm the woman and thought they were saving her from evil spirits. Mallard said if the group was Pakeha they'd have been given a much tougher sentence.

Don Brash in Orewa; Trevor Mallard in Wainuiomata - not a lot between them, really. And it's tosh. As we've seen with the debate over the provocation defence, plenty of people can walk away from court after taking the life of another and they're all nationalities, ethnicities and both genders.

Bennett might be a bit of a rebel, but with a rabble-rouser in your own team, it might pay to not get too righteous.