Today's resignation of Phil Heatley from Cabinet probably displays that the Ninth Floor have been pressuring Heatley to go.

While his indiscretions with the ministerial credit card have been small, Heatley and the Nats could not afford the ongoing scrutiny after the former minister admitted at his resignation press conference today that he had also inappropriately used his taxpayer funded card to purchase wine without food.

In this respect, I have to praise Heatley for his honesty and sincerety in coming forward. He recognised that in the current economic environment with many individuals still struggling and with his government initiating public spending cuts that any unwise spending of taxpayers money, however small, would be unpopular. Besides, as a cabinet minister on a quarter million dollar a year salary, Heatley could have afforded to make personal purchases out of his own pocket. While Heatley rightly repaid one credit card spend on a personal wallet straight away, it was only this week that he repaid the other inappropriate spending which included a family trip to the movies.

At the same time, the other transgressor, Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee, remains in Cabinet. While he has admitted to misusing a ministerial credit card as well (at a National Party function), it must be noted that he has repaid his debt to the taxpayer too. But for how long will the opposition parties hold off on grilling other ministers, like Brownlee, over their spending habits? With Labour still languishing at around 30 percent in the opinion polls, they will be likely to try and seize upon both Heatley and Brownlee's wrongful spend ups as a sign that other ministers could be wrongly feeding at the trough too.

But there are two things that could blunt Labour and other opposition parties potential attacks. One is that (as I am writing this blog) the parliamentary three monthly expense claims for all MPs to the end of December has just been released by Speaker Lockwood Smith. This shows that the travel expenses of Opposition Leader Phil Goff have gone up substantially whereas the expense claims for other MPs has gone down across the board. While Goff's travel expenses are no doubt all legitimate in terms of his conducting parliamentary business, the question might still be asked in that with all this travel as to why his party's and his own poll ratings still haven't budged. The second is that while in government, Labour had their own various ministerial misdameanours to contend with including, at one stage, former Labour Party minister Marian Hobbs and former Alliance Party MP Philida Bunkle inappropriately claiming out of town accomodation expenses when they were both Wellington residents. This forced Helen Clark to stand them both down in 2001 with Hobbs eventually returning to Cabinet while Bunkle never fully recovered and quit as an MP after the Alliance meltdown in 2002.

And these past precedents raise another question. Will Phil Heatley return to Cabinet after having done his penance on the backbenches? Ministerial rehabilitation was deployed by former prime minister Clark as a means of rewarding recalcitrant former ministers who behaved themselves while on the backbenches. Already a questioner at Heatley's resignation press conference this morning asked this very question of the former minister. Reportedly Heatley answered that he would have to do a lot of time on the backbenches before Prime Minister John Key would ever consider bringing him back.  In my view, given the nature of Heatley's political crime, it is likely that he will be rehabilitated into Cabinet but not until a possible second term for National.

At this time, it appears that John Key has begun perfecting the art of ministerial and political management. He has seen off one minister (Richard Worth) completely and now another (Heatley) at least for the time being. Putting the heat on Heatley over his particular expense claims may give the Nats more breathing space in the polls in the run-up to what will be a difficult Budget in May. Then it is expected that the heat will go on the Nats for entirely different reasons.