PM puts her office in the spotlight

By HELEN TUNNAH

The Prime Minister will ask officials to investigate how staff in her electorate office handled papers about an expelled Sri Lankan girl.

Helen Clark told Parliament yesterday that she had "very grave concerns" that documents given to her Mt Albert office for one purpose were used for another.

Dumped Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel used the documents to publicly criticise the Sri Lankan girl's failed refugee claim and her lawyers' attempts to fight the girl's removal from New Zealand.

But the documents may have been given to Helen Clark's electorate staff in an attempt to elicit support from the Prime Minister for the girl.

Ms Dalziel was effectively sacked last week for lying about how the documents, which included usually private legal notes, were made public.

She said she had been sent them by the PM's electorate office as the Government faced negative publicity about the expulsion. She gave them to the media, but then several times denied doing so.

In Parliament yesterday, Helen Clark said she agreed with National's deputy leader, Gerry Brownlee, that it was not acceptable that a document given to an MP seeking help was then used in another way.

"I have a very grave concern about the fact that information made available for one purpose was then used for another," she said.

"I have made it very clear that I disapprove of that, and I must put the matter in the hands of the Parliamentary Service as to how it deals with this matter.

"I want people to be able to deal with elected officers in trust and confidence."

Ms Dalziel has said she received the document from the electorate office, but how that office got it and if it was sent from there to Ms Dalziel are matters in dispute.

Carole Curtis, one of the girl's lawyers, says one of the documents could have come only from the teenager's room at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre.

The State Services Commission is expected to announce today the terms of reference for an inquiry into the origins of the documents and how Ms Dalziel got them.