Lees-Galloway - Sloppy and Stupid

Ian Lees-Galloway - Please resign, you are simply not up to it.

The events of the past few weeks regarding our Immigration Minister and the handling (or should that be mis-handling) of the Karel Sroubek affair have raised awareness for the general public of the incompetence and ineptitude of not only Lees-Galloway in this case, but, the growing chorus from the sideline of disbelief and amazement as one minister after another continues to flounder under the spotlight and in some cases completely right royally stuff things up.

We all make mistakes and there has to be a very small certain level of tolerance but Lees-Galloway is a seasoned politician and we should demand much better from him. His was an amateurs mistake and highlighted his arrogance and foolish self-belief that he could make a decision on the fly and get away with it. What made it worst was his own blustering, get nothing done, but we will make a loud noise, counterpart Winston Peters blaming the ministry officials for the screw up.

My grandfather used to say that “you can’t raise your dignity by standing on it” and blaming your underlings for your muck up only proves you are certainly no leader and should be nowhere near the leadership table. Part of great leadership means taking responsibility, little wonder we are so bereft of quality leadership in government here in NZ when our own politicians can’t admit their mistakes, and, their quickest line of defense is to blame the very officials who did their job and supplied the minister with the information he needed to make the right call.

Lees-Galloway’s problem was he didn’t read the whole thing and surely the words which were no doubt in the report - “came to New Zealand on a false passport” should have been a BIG red flag and enough to send Sroubek packing, never to set foot on our shores again. His history is chequered to be sure and we certainly don’t want his type here at all especially when he deliberately defrauded our identification and passport system blatantly to get access to our country.

Being a regular viewer of question and answers time in our House of Representatives it actually is really embarrassing to watch when many of the current ministers responses are both inadequate and pathetic to say the least. It is not like the questions are overly difficult as National regularly don’t put the government under the pressure that they should but it does show a gross lack of all round ability and intelligence.

We were promised by the PM that this regime would be the most transparent government in our history, this last saga with Sroubek and Lees-Galloway shows that it is anything but.

To the minister we say for the sake of the country, for once do the right and noble thing and resign from your lofty position as Minister of Immigration.