Key's mistake: keeping quiet over Worth

Former Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels telephoned this morning to talk about Richard Worth's forced resignation as a minister, what is fair and what is not.

Not surprisingly, Samuels has a great deal of sympathy for Worth and concerns that he is being subjected to a "kangaroo court" before he has been fairly dealt with by the justice system.

He wasn't just critical of John Key but Phil Goff too for what he called joining in the "muck raking."

Samuels stood aside as a minister in 2000 after the police began an investigation into allegations he had had sex with a minor - allegations he was later cleared of.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark originally said his reinstatement would depend on the inquiry but she changed her mind and sacked him part-way through.

That was incredibly unfair.

Samuels' view today is that it was unfair of Key to effectively sack Worth (he would have sacked him if he hadn't resigned) before the police investigation has finished.

To do so gave the public the impression that he necessarily believed the complainant - whose allegations against Worth might not stack up.

I have some sympathy with Samuels' view that Key has prejudiced Worth's case. Time will tell whether Key helped to ruin Worth's reputation or whether Worth did that all on his own.

But the way to avoid any doubt was for Key to have spell out why he had lost confidence in Worth as a minister, rather than keep it to himself.

Instead of doing that, Key said that he had lost confidence in him over a number of things which he wasn't prepared to reveal and that no matter what the outcome of the police inquiry involving Worth, he did not want him in his ministry.

The fact is that Worth has been more trouble to Key than probably all his other ministers put together - and that's only counting the problems we know about.

That is reason enough for him to have pushed him over the latest complaint - it was surely the final straw.

In the interests of natural justice, it is incumbent on Key to give more reasons as to why he has no confidence in Worth.

Unfortunately Worth is not defending himself.

He will no doubt have taken the advice of his lawyer - which is almost never the best thing to do politically.

Audrey Young