Jonathan Milne: Time for the absent Hawkins to go

Strolling with his wife through a Kaitaia timber mill a few days ago, acting Prime Minister Michael Cullen wisely refrained from commenting on the inevitable topless calendars hanging on some of the workshop walls.

Four hours later, he took the same approach to the police commissioner's admission that officers had filled 20 per cent of the force's computer hard drives with pornography.

While acknowledging the Government would be relieved the commission of inquiry into police conduct was finally making progress, he declined comment on the operational matters of the porn problem.

Instead it was the grim-faced Police Commissioner Rob Robinson who ran defence for the Government, and fronted up to the waiting media.

"Operational matters" has been the defensive catch-cry of Police Minister George Hawkins for the past few years, and he has some limited justification in using it as problem after problem emerges in the force.

Constitutionally, police have a greater degree of autonomy from their minister than do other public servants, in order to ensure that some corrupt government is not tempted to use the police as a private army.

But Hawkins has taken his reliance on that phrase too far, to the extent that police seem to be losing confidence in him. He ducks any responsibility.

And when Robinson fronted up on Thursday, and Cullen simultaneously explained how the commission of inquiry would handle the new allegations, Hawkins had again made himself scarce.

His sole contribution that day was an insubstantial media statement that wafted down from his Beehive office on the afternoon breeze.

"Police are only too well aware that they represent the law but are not a law unto themselves," his statement said.

His press secretary (at least the fifth unfortunate to fill that role) did well to extract any comment whatsoever: he has gone to ground for days at a time on previous crises such as the Louise Nicholas allegations, Iraena Asher's taxi and other 111 foul-ups, police issuing speeding tickets while serious crimes go unattended, and a mutiny over resourcing.

Hawkins' public performance is consistently poor, leaving Labour no excuse but to use his health as the spurious rationale for dumping him.

Meanwhile, the opposition can look forward to burgling Labour votes on the emotive issue of law and order, on which the Government had until recently been convincingly arguing that it was tough.

And Hawkins? It's time for him to perf.