This is made all the funnier because in the Editors notes at the beginning of the David Parker edition of the magazine (its easier to describe Investigate based on who the target is) Ian even went so far as to say this was what the government was doing. ;-)

Asked about Mr Wishart on Newstalk ZB yesterday the Prime Minister said: “He’s a scandalmonger and he’ll carry on with that.

“He’ll carry on trying to pry into every little nook and cranny of people’s lives and all I’d say to people – and I think a lot of people listening would empathise with this – have any of us got nothing in our lives that we’d rather rerun the film on? I don’t think so.

“Mr Wishart is the sort of creep who really delights in picking out any little thing that people might have in their background.

“And what it says is if you want to meet the Wishart test of public life, you’d better be one of the Vestal Virgins.”

Clark labels magazine editor a ‘creep’ – NZ Herald

Now, I don’t know how many of you have the edition of Investigate that is in question (its on newstands still) but I seriously suggest that you read what Ian has to say at the beginning of the magazine in the editorial notes. Even before getting to the whole David Parker issue.

It is the responsibility of the press to ensure that those of the executive government be held accountable for their actions and to ensure that they are not in a position to bring disrepute to this nation. As Ian Wishart said in the magazine, if it were National that was in power, they would be under the same scrutiny Labour is now feeling.

David Parker incorrectly and deliberately filled false forms for over 9 years and yet wanted to become the Attourney General of this country? David Benson Pope bullied pupils while he was a teacher, yet we have him as Minister of Social Development? The list can go on. Do I even need to mention that the Prime Minister herself is not exactly honest? Lets discuss the things Rodney Hide was trying to bring up in Parliament yesterday regarding her car accident in December shall we?

The issue at point is not that you need to be absolutely squeaky clean to be a member of the government, but you need to be honest and you need to make sure you don’t try to hide or cover up your mistakes. It should be that more of the press in this country are investigating what the members of our Governement, Labour or National led, have done in the past and hold them to account. If the issue has already been dealt with succinctly, then fine, let the issue die. But if, like David Parker, the issue is so serious as to cast an extreme shadow of a doubt over his position within the Government, then those allegations should be made public. In this case, they were true and it forced Parker to resign.

When you take up a public office, you give up your privacy outside of your home life. This is not new. This is not something that is hard to figure out.

The fact that the Prime Minister has to resort to name-calling, when she has the largest investigative department in the country at her beck and call is just hillarious. Prima Facie cases will be dropped at her whim, but its damn hard to rope in a journalist who does his homework properly. :-)

What I find totally amusing is that the Herald ran this article and didn’t come across as agreeing with the Prime Minister. :-) In fact, they don’t seem to give an opinion on the issue at all. Do you think theres hope yet and they’re starting to amend their ways? Will they one day be out of the pocket of this Labour party? Hell, maybe if they started investigating the politicians in the same way I might buy the Herald more often, just as I do Investigate magazine.