Michele Hewitson: Dear politicians, it’s always best to resign quietly
Meng Foon: resigned to being resigned. Photo / Getty Images
Public figures would do well to remember that when you’ve got to go, it’s best to do it quietly.
When is a resignation not a resignation? When it is only possibly a resignation. Or when it is possibly not a resignation at all.
Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon resigned. Then he wasn’t sure whether he had resigned. He had sent an email to the Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins. He hadn’t sent the requisite resignation letter to the Associate Minister of Justice. He wasn’t quite sure how to.
Or an email bounced back. Or … something. Then he seemed to be hinting that despite the resignation, or lack thereof, he might just un-resign from resigning. He might refuse to come out from behind, or possibly from under, his presumably rather impressive commissioner’s desk. It is all impossibly confusing.
A situation this farcical could be an episode of Seinfeld. In fact it pretty much is the one where George Costanza quits his job after being banned from the executive bathroom. He then realises his chances of getting another job are slender at best.
Jerry suggests he just turn up at the office the next day and carry on as though he hadn’t quit. This turned out as well as could be expected.
Still, it might have been worth a go. Foon could have handcuffed himself to his commissioner’s desk and swallowed the key. Why not? It would only be as bonkers as the whole chaotic real-life episode.
Eventually he did decide he had resigned. He was finally, you might say, resigned to being resigned. Not quite.
He is accused of failing to adequately disclose a conflict of interest relating to more than $2 million of government money paid to MY Gold Investments, a company of which he is a director and which is an emergency-housing provider. He said it isn’t accurate to extrapolate from this figure that his company had made about $2 million – there are pesky things like overheads and so on. He did not reveal just how much his company had made.
Resigned to being resigned? He had been “thrown under the bus”, he said. And if he’s going to be thrown under the bus, every other bugger should go under with him.