Any failure to humiliate Dr Cullen over the Police ejection of Parliamentary journalist Nick Wang should warn National that it will be very much harder for them (than Labour) to take and hold power.

PM Jenny Shipley’s officials were suspected of conveying instructions to our Police and diplomatic protection personnel from Chinese  security men in 1999. Police moved law-abiding Tibet supporters from near the Chinese President’s hotel and route. The media ran the story for weeks.

Labour were able to make the issue run because the media were ripe. They shared a collective sense of mission –  to test the PM’s credibility,  and to see the government gone. The Tibet protest suppression had the right ingredients – kowtowing to a foreign power, suspected duplicity, and constitutional breaches (of the independence of the Police). 

Dr Cullen has gifted identical factors to National.  We’ll see if they can use them. So far the running seems to have been made entirely by the Gallery. 

Immediately after the 1999 election Labour initiated a Select Committee inquiry, designed to destroy Jenny Shipley’s credibility.

I learnt much from sitting on that enquiry.  Once it was clear that Mrs Shipley was not implicated it became my first experience of Parliamentary bi-partisanship, as the committee grew increasingly appalled at the untrustworthiness of Police witnesses. No MP on that committee was unaffected. Most shattering was the simple stupidity at senior levels,  in sticking to incredible denials in the face of overwhelming evidence, including video footage.

The committee had no desire to destroy public confidence in Police integrity. We noted our unhappiness with their evidence and focussed the report on protocols for preserving constitutional propriety. It appears from reports of the Wang affair that Police agreement on those might have been as unreliable as their evidence to the committee.