Barry Soper: Politicians have sex and bonk bans are unrealistic and stupid

While the Aussie Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull holds the key to his ministers' chastity belts, Jacinda Ardern's not planning a bonk ban for her ministers in this country.

Ardern's quite a lot younger than most of them and reckons her ministers know what's expected of them.

The Aussie ministers certainly now know what they're not allowed to do when it comes to staff working for them.

Turnbull says it's unacceptable for them to have a sexual relationship with someone working in their office. Of course it follows his deputy bad boy Barnaby Joyce, a family values campaigner getting his press secretary pregnant and breaking up his 24-year marriage.

Ardern's not planning a bonk ban because she believes her ministers know what her expectations are when it comes to their behaviour. And besides, she says she wouldn't want to have to confront them about it. I'll bet she wouldn't.

But sex between MPs and their staff, extramarital affairs in Parliament and scandals isn't a problem confined to Australia.

Many have fallen foul here over the years of what Ardern says are her expectations, going way back to the Muldoon years, evidenced by a poster once pasted up around Wellington at the time reading, "Rooting Pig shot in Ngaio, PM Safe".

And then of course there was the David Lange affair exposed by his recently departed wife at the time Naomi. And they're just a couple of the sexual indiscretions that have been made public over the years, plenty more have remained under the radar.

But back then it was a time of mixed morality, Helen Clark was told by the late Jim Anderton to get married before she stood for Parliament because it wasn't a good look for a single woman to stand for office.

Today we've got a pregnant, unmarried Prime Minister and as it turns out another pregnant, unmarried minister in Julie-Anne Genter - which hopefully shows how at least we've moved with the times in this country.

These bonk bans, which are now in place in the US Congress and Australia, are unrealistic and quite frankly stupid.

Many of us have begun relationships in the workplace, in fact an American survey shows more than half of professionals in their country have had an office romance. Of those who have dated a co-worker, 42 per cent had an ongoing relationship.

So a bonk ban is about as unrealistic and as silly as the school in Britain threatening pupils with expulsion if they fall into a romantic relationship.

And besides who would police it? Can you imagine Jacinda Ardern calling in one of her ministers to lecture them about morality?