O'Sullivan on inquiries, pies and Penthouses

Fran O'Sullivan draws on words and events from days gone by as she notes that John Key's announcement that there will be no further GCSB inquiry is unsurprising; she opines:

John Key's decision to rule out a further inquiry into the latest government fiasco involving New Zealand's spooks fraternity is hardly surprising.
There is an old maxim in politics that it is not a wise idea for Cabinet ministers to "kick your own ass with your own boot". Apart from being physically inelegant (and for some impossible) it has the net effect of making it rather clear that the Cabinet minister in question is happy to shoulder some of the blame for a political disaster.
The net effect of holding any further inquiry as the Greens want is that it would inevitably bring into public view Key's own ministerial oversight of the Government Communications Security Bureau.
This is not an area that the Prime Minister is going to probe any time soon.

John Key will be pleased that the school holiday recess for Parliament has arrived. The opposition parties will continue to play political games, but with Parliament in recess, they will be largely preaching to the converted. We strongly doubt that Police Commissioner Peter Marshall will accept Russel Norman's invitation to investigate the Dotcom fiasco further.

There has been little for the Government to rejoice over in the last few months, as O'Sullivan notes:

His Government has started to fray around the edges. This is not terminal by any means but it does require more focus.

She is right on the money here. We hope that John Key uses these two weeks wisely; to get Ministers in, to issue a few attitude readjustments, and if necessary, to consider a reshuffle. A year into his second term as PM things have not gone as well as we would have hoped, and now might be the chance to rearrange the pieces on the board; the 2014 election will roll around quickly.

And lastly, Fran O'Sullivan reminds us of an earlier spy drama; one in which she played a small role; she concludes:

The first big story in my own journalistic career was not a result of fearless investigative digging by me.
Like many "scoops" it was pure happenstance.
My 10-year-old son brought home a briefcase that had been left on the fence outside another press gallery journalist's house.
It was of course the infamous SIS briefcase.
Then - like now - I can't name the spook whose briefcase contained the legendary Penthouse magazine and three cold meat pies, plus notes of a dinner party conversation hosted by a German diplomat and much more. The spook had three ID cards.
The SIS later tried to respin the affair by telling the late Graeme Hunt, who wrote about it in a book on the security services, that the contents of the briefcase were not as reported.
The GCSB's incompetence is even more alarming as it has resulted in a person being unlawfully spied on - not just tipping a bucket of the proverbial over the spooks.

There was an element of farce in the SIS pie-and-Penthouse saga, just as there seems to be an element of farce over everything surrounding Kim Dotcom. John Key needs to get his administration back on track, and the next two weeks will be the ideal time to do just that.