Act's hard line law and order spokesman MP David Garrett has told Parliament he created a false identity by applying for a passport in the name of a dead child 26 years ago.
Mr Garrett's revelation follows his confirmation earlier this week that he was convicted of assault in 2002 in Tonga.
In a statement to the House this afternoon, the MP said he had used the method outlined in Frederick Forsyth's novel The Day of the Jackal to apply for the dead child's passport.
Mr Garrett said he had applied for the passport as a prank - to see if it could be done - and had never used the passport, which had since expired.
Mr Garrett was arrested years later as part of an investigation into bogus passports, conducted by the police in the wake of the discovery Israeli Mossad agents had used the same method to obtain New Zealand passports.
He was discharged without conviction in 2005 and given permanent name suppression.
This reflects very, very badly on Garrett, on Rodney Hide who knew about Garrett's indiscretion, and on Act. We wonder if the Act Party can survive today's bizarre revelation. We certainly can't see how David Garrett can continue as Act's law and order spiokesman, and possibly even as an MP. This is strike number two for him, in the course of 48 hours.
The political landscape has just become very interesting indeed.
2 comments:
Well, they never sacked Clark for Paintergate or all the other corruption, so, what is the difference. This was yonks ago, and Garrett was not an MP. Clark did all her corrput deals while PM. Difference is, Clark had the media and police on her side...
Yeah, because stealing a dead baby's identity to get a fake passport (for what reason?) is nothing when you compare it to signing a painting you didn't paint for a charity auction. Ooooo, look over there, someone else did something else once, therefore it's OK to assault people and steal identities. Losers.
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