Paul Holmes: Out of touch, way out of line

Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club invited Karnail Singh to its premises but then shut the door on him because of his turban. Photo / Doug Sherring

They have something in common, Chris Carter and the Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club. They both keep digging when they're deep in the hole.

Chris Carter simply did not get it. He did not get the anger that the free-ride spending by ministers on their ministerial credit card during the last five years of the Clark Government was causing across the country. He had no regrets about his own.

He had a reason for it all. The argument was not about how difficult it can be for a New Zealand minister travelling overseas. It was about paying for private goods and services with a public credit card, especially for bunches of flowers and spas at foreign hotels.

So he came out of the caucus and his only regret, he said, was losing the foreign affairs spokesmanship.

"Do I regret going off the front bench of the Labour Party and dropping the Foreign Affairs portfolio? I sure do. It's a great honour and privilege to be on the front bench and I've always been really interested in foreign affairs and it was always the job I most wanted." And off he went.

Phil Goff heard about it. And reacted immediately. An hour later Carter issued a statement unreservedly apologising for his expenses when travelling on the taxpayer. But Goff swung again and finished him off.

He said that Carter's statement was the very minimum he, Goff, had demanded. He said Carter was now on leave, that he had sent him home. He now had to prove himself to Goff. When he comes back he would be expected to behave.

Goff would expect to see a difference. "I've sent him home and asked him to think about his future." What's more, Carter had now lost conservation, the one responsibility he had left. All of it just as a principal would address an errant high school student.

It was Goff at his decisive best. It was the first real gesture of leadership we have seen from him. He let the three MPs stew for a few days, saw how the expenses scandal was playing across the country and punished the hubris of the former ministers in one fell swoop.

He earned points, big time, this week. I doubt it will do the party as a whole much good, though. The country still is not taking Labour's phone calls. While Goff may have displayed good skills the senior members' attitude to use of the ministerial credit cards has thrown bad ordure upon the party.

And, of course, foreign affairs goes to Maryan Street, one of the old guard, the feminist, machine politician who has been round for years. Grant Robertson, everyone says, is a man to watch.

But Carter, for his part, has gone. He will not be back in any sort of prominence. His effective slighting of the leader in that initial statement after last week's caucus, that smart-alec lack of remorse, has done for him.

His remarks last weekend that he is going to have to ask himself if he wants to "keep putting up with this stuff going on all the time" showed only self-pity and no connection with reality.

Jim Anderton got a walloping from Deputy Prime Minister Bill English this week, too.

English reminded Mr Anderton about his month-long tour of Europe while he was a minister and his "thousand dinners". Eventually, so many MPs come to believe they are owed somehow for their great work and sacrifice, no matter what side of the fence they come from.

AS FOR the Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club, well, they are ludicrous people. They take the cake.

They are a pathetic vestige of another era. They are racial and religious bigots.

They deserve the whacking they are probably going to get now that the Sikh Council of New Zealand is involved and the Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres is emerging from the shadows.

The Manurewa club has decided to maintain its policy on headwear. This policy not only bans silly hats on old women but has the effect of banning any Sikh visitors from wearing their turbans. Even the way this row came about was weird.

Unbelievable, in fact. Karnail Singh was invited to the club to a function in his honour in recognition of his service to the community. He wore his turban. They denied him entry because of it.

Can you believe the rudeness of that? They invite a man in order to honour his work for others but because he is wearing his turban, they won't let him in. What a farce. How to make a club the laughing stock of the nation.

What is especially absurd is that this is the Cosmopolitan Club. Its actions defy any notion of the cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan, as a word, is all about internationalism, the broader, wider world.

It is about freedom from local, provincial and national ideas and prejudices. It is a word indicating belonging to the world as a whole.

Manurewa Cosmopolitan Club indeed. They should call it the Broken Down Bigots Club. If you can wear a turban on an aircraft without bothering aviation security, if you can wear a turban into the RSA, then you should be able to wear one at a dusty old club in Manurewa.

AS FOR the horror of the Gulf oil spill, nearly half a billion litres of oil, they now think, have exploded from the Deepwater Horizon well.

This week, President Barack Obama had BP principals crawling along to the White House and apologising to the American people for the disaster. What's more, BP will pay for the entire clean-up now and in coming years. BP will deposit $20 billion now in an escrow account to compensate people who have lost livelihoods and jobs in the oil industry.

And that is just a start. BP is awash in cash. It has rights to massive oil reserves and runs the biggest oil field in North America, in Alaska. Now it must pay for what Obama this week called "recklessness".

And, of course, BP cancelled its dividends to its shareholders, investors who have already seen the value of their investment fall by half since the well blew up and began spewing.

It was the Obama we have come to know this week. He is not frightened to command and he is not frightened to be patient. He has established his ascendancy over one of the giant oil multinationals and had them begging for forgiveness.

He took his time despite intense public pressure and from the rabid hounds on Fox News and worked through the issues carefully, just as he did with health reform and with the extra troops for Afghanistan.

In the case of the Gulf disaster he put together a tremendous financial package and humbled British Petroleum, the first time that has ever happened. Then he addressed the nation from the Oval Office, urging his countrymen to push towards a post oil world.

It is the first time, as far as I can recall, the President has ever gone live to the nation from the Oval Office on the subject of a man-made environmental disaster.