John Armstrong: To read or not to read, or to dodge the question

Wondering what you should say about that embarrassing memo, minister? Just tell everyone you have not read it.

That seems to be the tactic Labour is adopting when under pressure to respond to documents, leaked or otherwise, whose contents cannot be lightly dismissed.

During a press conference last week, the Prime Minister ducked questions on David Benson-Pope's treatment of the police report covering the investigation into assault allegations against him by repeatedly stressing she had not read the hundreds of pages in the police file.

In Parliament yesterday, Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey parried questions about a critical internal TVNZ memo by chief executive Ian Fraser before his resignation by saying he had yet to read it. Both examples stretch credulity.

Helen Clark did not need to read the whole police file. It would have taken her all of five minutes to absorb the key document - the report of the investigating officer. It would have taken even less time to read the police interview of the pupil who allegedly had a tennis ball stuffed in his mouth. It would have taken her a fraction of a second to realise just how selective Mr Benson-Pope was in quoting from the former pupil's statement to police.

Given pressure on her time, her staff could have given her a summary and analysis of the key portions of the file. It would be surprising if such a brief was not available.

However, knowing what was in the police report would have made it all the more difficult for Helen Clark to defend Mr Benson-Pope remaining a Cabinet minister. Mr Maharey had more than three hours between journalists first seeking comment on the Fraser memo and his being questioned about it in Parliament.

True, he was busy in between attending Labour's weekly caucus meeting and then holding a press conference to try to douse the potentially far more damaging flare-up in his education portfolio over the marking of NCEA papers. Yet, the Fraser memo runs to just seven pages.

Unfortunately for the minister, it brutally catalogues TVNZ's woes with its charter - a Maharey creation.

It warns local content will "shrink markedly" next year and beyond.

And it says it will be difficult for TVNZ to sustain its claim that local content differentiates it from competitors.

By the time he got to Parliament, Mr Maharey sought to contain the damage by downplaying the importance of the memo. He claimed it had been prepared for the TVNZ board for a "planning session" and was "something from the chief executive for them to think about".

And, by saying he would "try to have a proper read of the document" when he had time, he belittled it even further - a case perhaps of ignoring the messenger rather than shooting him.