KEY POINTS:
There is a sense of disbelief and sadness among those of us who know Mary Anne Thompson that her outstanding public service career has ended in such disgrace.
Her resignation as head of the Immigration Service was inevitable after revelations that she helped family members from Kiribati to gain visa waivers and then to successfully apply for residency against immigration policy.
Once that became public, her credibility was shot. Nothing could have been more guaranteed than that to undermine the reputation of the service that she was helping to restore after years of being hammered - quite legitimately - remember Lying in Unison, the resignation of Lianne Dalziel, policy upheavals and staff failings, a Saddam henchman living in New Zealand, Phillip Field's record. It seemed endless.
Thompson's appointment in 2004 was part of the circuit-breaker to rebuild the competence and reputation of an important arm of the public service.
But what she did could not be excused and she had to go.
Hopefully she came to that conclusion herself without pressure from Chris Blake, the head of the Labour Department.
What can't be fathomed is why her highly regarded judgment deserted her.
Thompson was no ordinary public servant (I say 'was' because it is hard to see her returning to the public sector).
She has operated at the epicentre of the political process and been highly respected. She was Helen Clark's chief policy adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and the one on whom Clark relied when she wanted a bomb put under Government departments dragging their feet over Closing the Gaps policy.
She played a pivotal role in the development of the very tangled and complex Foreshore and Seabed policy.
She was known to be a bit prickly but won the confidence of the prickliest of all politicians, Winston Peters, from a very early stage. She was one of the three authors of Ka Awatea Peters' blueprint for Maori development, the catalyst for Peters' eventual sacking as Maori Affairs Minister by Jim Bolger.
It was no surprise that she turned up in Peters' office when he became Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer in 1996.
With her inside view of Government she has seen many a minister and public fall from grace over poor judgments which makes her own indiscretions so puzzling.
She once lived in Kiribati and we were there on the same trip in 2000 - her as the PM's adviser and me as part of the media corps covering the 2000 Pacific Islands Forum.
TVNZ gave Haydn Jones' excellent story on the case splash treatment on April 17 (just before I disappeared on holiday for three weeks if you've been wondering why I've been quiet).
He had been trying for ages to get a copy of a secret inquiry that was completed last year by former Justice Secretary David Oughton.
Another inquiry is underway by the State Services Commission and hopefully it will be more comprehensive and stretch back to the initial handling of the matter - make that non-handling - by ex-Labour Department chief, James Buwalda, who did not discipline Thompson.
The disturbing element of this case, however, is that the resignation was tendered only because Thompson's inappropriate involvement in her family's applications became public, not because of the inappropriate involvement itself.
