Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's good that Trevor Mallard's coming home

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

So here's a little bit of happy news for anyone still feeling injustice over the petty way that Trevor Mallard turned the sprinklers on the Parliamentary protesters and made everything worse - he is coming home from his plum job in Ireland as the ambassador.

As Winston Peters says, quoting The Seekers - the carnival's over. And it's a good job too, because it was always deeply unfair that Mallard could behave like a child and basically torment fellow Kiwis, and then be rewarded by his mates with a job that was funded by Kiwis.

Now Winston's trying to spin this like he's bringing Trevor Mallard home early. He's actually not really at all. Trevor's due home in January. It's understood that he's gonna be back in November. Whoop dee doo- two months early in a three-year term is hardly a punishment or a massive recall, isn't it?

I mean, if Winston wanted to bring him home early, he could have brought him home at any point in the last two years that he's been the Foreign Minister.

But I will agree with Winston on something here, which is that I think we have got to stop appointing politicians to diplomatic jobs. He says full stop - I say as a reward.

I still think that there will be some politicians who are exceptional and who deserve these jobs because they would do an excellent job representing us. And I've always thought it was a pity that Helen Clark never got a posting overseas.

But often, they're just lousy at it, aren't they?

I mean, Phil Goff stuffed up. He had to come back. Jonathan Hunt embarrassed us by wanting to claim the pension in the UK when he was already on a very good wicket from us. Kevin Rudd - the Australian version of all of this - got sent to Washington by the Aussies and then embarrassed them by posting weird stuff about Trump before Trump became President again, then having to go back through his social medias and delete it all.

Being a politician doesn't necessarily make these people good diplomats, and Trevor Mallard is absolutely an example of that. He has never been accused of being diplomatic.

In my opinion, the only reason that he ever got this gig in Ireland is because his daughter lives in Ireland, and because he was some sort of an avuncular figure to Grant and Jacinda and Chippy, who were in Government when he was appointed.

That is not a good reason to send someone to an Ambassador's job. It's not a good reason to get a job that you and I are paying for.

So as Winston says, carnival's over - good thing too.

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