Goff is right, Key is wrong

One politician was bound to be deeply embarrassed today, Phil Goff or John Key. One would be right and one would be wrong. And the answer is that John Key is wrong.

The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader have been publicly disputing what was said in their private conversation on May 6 about text and phone messages from Richard Worth to a Labour woman activist (that stopped on February 23).

Goff insisted his version was more accurate because immediately after the call he had written a file note from the scribbles he had taken during the conversation.

The file note was headed 9.45 - 9.55 pm. Key dismissed that at his post cabinet press conference yesterday saying "that can't be right because I got off the plane at 10 pm." Phil Goff has just retrieved his own phone records of the call made from his desk at Parliament to Key's cellphone. The call started at 21.49 (11 minutes to 10 pm) and lasted 8 minutes and 30s. That means that Goff is substantially correct.

"I just don't know what's in his head," Goff said this morning. "Why would he have made a bizarre claim like that that he was still on a plane?"

Goff has a point. Why would Key who must have more than a dozen flights since May 6 think he could specifically remember the landing time of that one, without checking. Key remembers he was on the Mangere Bridge at the time of the call. But that means nothing.

Maybe Air New Zealand was early that night. Maybe Key had arrived on an earlier flight. Whatever the explanation, the error by Key gives Goff more credibility as to his version of events about the complaint at the time.

Goff says the tone of the conversation between the pair of them was such that he believed Key would deal with the complaint on the basis that it was believable, that he had heard such claims before and that that was the reason National had not made Dr Worth Speaker.

That is noted in Goff file note, but it is something Key denies having said. It is a very important point. Key has a very good reason for denying having said that. If he did, and it looks like he did, it is evidence that the PM is sharing confidences on such taboo issues as cabinet selection with the Leader of the Opposition. Hardly appropriate. And it could a kick in the guts to Speaker Lockwood Smith - though given the accolades he is receiving for his stewardship of the House, it is hard to imagine he could be wounded by suggestions someone else had been in the running.

Key had the moral high ground on this issue last week. His willingness to meet the woman complainant only after she has show the texts and phone logs to his chief of staff is entirely reasonable.Labour's stalling tactics have looked as though they know they don't have a solid case but want to spin it out for as long as possible.

That accords with his own file note which says the contact from Worth to the woman was "verging on sexual harassment." And he acknowledged to me this morning that he has not even seen the woman's responses at any time let alone asked to see them.

But whatever holes there are in Goff's case at present, Key has just given him a leg up to seize the moral high ground.

Audrey Young

Pictured above: Labour Party leader Phil Goff. Photo / Mark Mitchell