New Zealand Listener

Picking holes

Politics is one long congaline of double standards.

A man who, as an adult, boasted of groping women’s bodies, and conspicuously declined to repent, went on to become president of the United States. A Tauranga man who, at 16, was asked to leave his school for beating up a 13-year-old may lose his right to be a mere backbencher.

The inquiry into the past deeds of new National MP Sam Uffindell may or may not end his political career, but his predicament illustrates the considerable grey area around public figures with ugliness in their pasts.

At the time of writing, allegations of further bad

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