Poll says Field should resign

Taito Phillip Field

Nearly two-thirds of the public believes Labour MP Taito Phillip Field should resign from Parliament following the Ingram report, a TVNZ poll released last night showed.

It found 59 per cent of those asked believed the Mangere MP should resign, 29 per cent said he should stay and the rest didn't know.

The report upheld two claims that he benefited from cheap labour in exchange for providing immigration assistance through avenues open to him as an MP.

It left questions about this occurring in several other instances, but author Noel Ingram, QC, said he did not have the powers to compel evidence which may have helped him resolve them.

The poll also found that 62 per cent of people believed the Government had not handled the issue well, 27 per cent said it had and the rest didn't know.

Despite the concerns about the Field issue, the results of a general poll released by TVNZ on Sunday revealed it appears not to have had an impact on the Government's overall popularity.

The poll showed National on 45 per cent and Labour on 43 per cent, the same results as last month.

Asked why the issue wasn't having more of an impact, Prime Minister Helen Clark said: "I have a view that there are issues that resonate within the beltway and issues which resonate beyond the beltway.

"Beyond the beltway the New Zealand economy, even at the low point of the economic cycle, continues to perform very well."

The "spectacularly low" unemployment figures helped and "there's not a bad winter's sports season going on".

"In other words, there are things which people do give their attention to and there are some which may be of great interest here [in Parliament] because they have a certain amount of theatre about them but they are not particularly salient."

She had made it clear since the report's release that there were "significant issues of judgment in it and that Mr Field would need to work to improve the way he operated as an MP".