Fran O'Sullivan: Hide's failings like those that brought Peters down

Act leader Rodney Hide's centre of gravity shifted too far away from his brain once he turned his attention from perk-busting to pork-busting.

The politician who made his name by excoriating MPs' perks, and attacking the wastage of taxpayers' money, faces deserved media scrutiny after a staffer said Hide timed an international fact-finding trip to coincide with the wedding of his girlfriend's brother in London.

It was already a well-established fact that Hide dipped into a parliamentary slush fund to pay for 90 per cent of Louise Crome's airfares, after Prime Minister John Key ruled his Cabinet ministers couldn't use Ministerial Services money for such trips during tough times.

He justifiably faced media flak over the devious method he used to circumvent Key's dictate.

But it was not until Hide was caught out slagging Key's leadership to Act supporters that he faced political utu. It was quickly leaked that Hide had taken a weekend off while in London to attend the Crome family wedding, and another day off in Los Angeles to take his girlfriend sight-seeing at Universal Studios.

As a past exponent of the leaking arts, Hide won't have to search far for fingerprints. An astute man would respond by drawing a line under the scandal by paying back Crome's $13,000 airfare, particularly as he has also been caught out boasting to his supporters about plans to save the taxpayer $66 million by axing 700 Auckland bureaucrats.

Although Hide says he has paid back $10,000 he and Crome spent on a holiday to Hawaii, he shows all the signs of having developed exactly the same type of hubris that led to NZ First leader Winston Peters' demise.

Parliamentary colleagues who suffered his sanctimonious attitude, as he used his maiden speech to Parliament to attack MPs' "perks", are enjoying his discomfiture.

They saw his popularity escalate as he delivered up mini-scandals to favoured television journalists and newspaper reporters who were short of a scoop to lead news bulletins or splash across the front pages of Sunday papers. When he reached a depressive low four or five years ago, he contemplated chucking in politics for a career as an investigative journalist.

Hide no longer bothers to turn the charm on for reporters. His face has developed hard edges.

It might be the result of too much body-building, but these days Hide performs a bit too much like a political thug for the comfort of other politicians and media.

In his defence, some news reports have been misleading. Hide didn't spend $50,000 taking himself and his partner overseas.

The Ministerial Services budget for the trip was $47,000.

This covered two Star Alliance round-the-world business airfares worth about $13,000 each for Hide and his senior principal secretary Kim McKenzie.

The budget also included accommodation at five-star hotels in London, Toronto, Portland and Los Angeles (Hide's partner shared his room) meals, insurance, communications, facilitation and ministerial gifts.

Crome's $13,000 airfare came out of a $12 million Parliamentary Service fund used for private travel and other purposes.

Internal Affairs chief executive Brendan Boyle, who was the fourth member of Hide's delegation, funded his trip from his department's budget, so the trip wasn't an entire "jolly".

But the perk-buster of old would have chewed up any political opponent who thumbed his nose at the Prime Minister in such a fashion.

In Maori Party MP Hone Harawira's case, he hasn't made a fetish out of perk-busting. But Harawira has damaged his party's reputation by accusing "white motherf***ers" of "puritanical bullshit" for expecting him to follow the rules when he took an unscheduled side trip to Paris during a taxpayer-funded work trip.

It is not a good look, coming so soon after the public was affronted by the scandal over Finance Minister Bill English's "ministerial house", and taxpayer-funded overseas trips by Act MP Sir Roger Douglas and Labour MP Chris Carter and their spouses.

The brute reality is that while our leading politicians are resorting to outright sophistry to justify their unconscionable plundering of the rapidly diminishing public purse, other Kiwis are struggling.

Despite the big-ticket Job Summit, there has been little real focus on the shameful explosion of youth unemployment.

Figures out this week show 25.1 per cent of job-seekers between 15 to 19 years of age cannot get work. Just over 10 per cent of those aged 20 to 24 are in the same boat.

Youth unemployment has been rapidly snowballing since New Zealand entered a recession in the first quarter of last year, and shows every sign of being as long-lasting as the early 1990s recession, which resulted in deep and long-lasting damage to far too many of our young people.

Back then, parents worried that their young adult children might resort to "copycat suicides" as a sense of despair permeated a generation whose opportunities had lessened.

From January, Britain will guarantee job offers, training or paid workforce experiences to all people under 25 who have been unemployed for more than a year.

The public's tolerance for our "perking politicians" is fast disappearing.

fran.o'sullivan@nzherald.co.nz