Dyson sickened by record leak

Former Government minister Ruth Dyson, who resigned her portfolios on Tuesday after failing a breath-alcohol test, said yesterday that she had been convicted and fined for possessing cannabis when she was a teenager.

She said she had declared the conviction on every Labour Party nomination form she had filled in and Prime Minister Helen Clark had been aware of it.

"I find it sickening that some 25 years later someone has anonymously passed this information to journalists," the 43-year-old Ms Dyson said in a brief statement.

Some news organisations are understood to have received anonymous letters detailing the cannabis conviction.

A Government spokesman said neither Ms Dyson nor Helen Clark would comment further.

Ms Dyson was caught in an apparently random police check early on Tuesday as she was driving from Parliament to her Wellington home.

She had earlier flown to the capital from Christchurch and was reported to have drunk wine in the Koru Club at Christchurch Airport and on the flight.

She spent more than two hours in her ministerial office, where she is believed to have drunk three more glasses of wine.

Ms Dyson is alleged to have recorded a level of 744 micrograms of alcohol a litre of breath. The legal limit is 400 mcg.

She will appear in court on December 4.

Ms Dyson handed her resignation to Helen Clark a few hours after being breath-tested.

The Prime Minister accepted it, saying she was sad and disappointed that Ms Dyson had made a mistake but that she had done the right thing by resigning from her ministerial roles. nte Ms Dyson, a minister outside the cabinet, held the Disability Issues portfolio and was an Associate Minister of Health, Social Services and ACC.

Helen Clark said the resignation did not rule Ms Dyson out as a minister in future. "It doesn't preclude Ruth returning at a future stage."

The Prime Minister sacked Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels in June after he was embroiled in a scandal over his criminal record, involving theft and assault convictions going back nearly 40 years. He was cleared of sex allegations.

- NZPA