Problems cast cloud over one of Labour's shining stars

By HELEN TUNNAH, deputy political editor

Once touted by Time magazine as one of the world's promising leaders, Lianne Dalziel has not shone in Parliament.

The Immigration Minister's latest mistake, denying she gave potentially confidential documents to the media when she did, follows ministerial controversies over the wrong deportation of a family in a "dawn raid" and complaints that officials lied about refugee Ahmed Zaoui.

Despite that, the Government yesterday praised her performance as a Cabinet minister, led by Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen and Prime Minister Helen Clark, who said Ms Dalziel gave "1000 per cent every day".

Ms Dalziel, a former lawyer and union secretary, was elected to Parliament in 1990 and was immediately tipped as the star of the Labour caucus, possibly even a rival to Helen Clark as a future leader.

But her second term as an opposition MP exposed frailties.

Before the 1996 election, she struggled as opposition health spokeswoman. Helen Clark stepped in to take a lead role during the campaign, and the following year Ms Dalziel lost the job.

It was announced that she needed some weeks off to recover from a "stress-related illness".

Later she said her collapse showed her who her true friends were, and she blamed her problems on unresolved grief from a marriage breakup and the upset caused by New Zealand First's decision after the first MMP election to go into coalition with National.

When Labour took office in 1999, Helen Clark promoted Ms Dalziel to the Cabinet and the immigration portfolio.

Until this week, her worst problems in the portfolio had been the botched deportation of a family early one morning, which critics likened to a dawn raid, and a leaked memo that suggested officials had lied "in unison" about Algerian politician Mr Zaoui, who had been detained as a threat to national security.

Ms Dalziel blamed the deportation mistake on officials, who she said had not told her the truth and had let the country down. Officers filed personal grievances. The "lie in unison" row has yet to be resolved.

Refugee Status Appeals Authority letter of June 27, 2003 to Carole Curtis (the 'guinea pig letter') [PDF]
(This is the letter which Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel has been accused of leaking)