Mike's Minute: The truth always comes out

What do they say about the truth always coming out?

By Friday morning Kerrin Leoni was gone.

She lied and she got caught with the photo and the video. Not only didn’t it pass the pub test, it didn’t pass the truth test.

Campaigns almost always have things in them you never saw coming. For Labour it was a combination of dishonesty and their past.

Graham Adams: Why does the left soft-soap Māori gangs?

The Coalition parties can barely believe their luck as the gang scandal continues to engulf their political rivals even as advance voting begins.

Little wonder Oriini Kaipara has been described as a “sleeper-agent for the centre-right” given that a video she posted of herself at a Mongrel Mob hui — alongside Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, Green MP Hūhana Lyndon and Green candidate Michel Mulipola — sparked the political firestorm.

Richard Prebble: Who else?

“It is just as important to say what you are against as what you are for”.

Political candidates take their lead from their leader. They need to know not just what the party stands for, but what it stands against.

While in no way excusing Kerrin Leoni’s attempt to cover up her gang visit, it is obvious that she and her campaign team did not know Chris Hipkins’ position on gangs.

Kerre Woodham: That wasn't a family gathering, that was campaigning

The gangs, as we know, create wholesale damage and destruction in our society through their drug trafficking. Now it looks like they're causing wholesale damage to Labour.

After roundly criticising members of the Greens and Te Pati Māori for visiting a mongrel mob gang pad and posing for photos, putting it on your social media, Labour leader Chris Hipkins ruled out his coalition partners holding the justice or police portfolios in any government he was in charge of. He was talking tough. Now it transpires one of his own MPs was campaigning with gang members, with a video circulating of Kerrin Leoni in a Labour jacket handing out Labour Party flyers to mobsters.

David Farrar: Labour candidate campaigning for votes at Mongrel Mob fundraiser!!!!!

Stuff reports:

Video has emerged of Labour candidate Kerrin Leoni campaigning at what appears to be a gang event.

In the video, obtained by Whakaata Māori, a patched Mongrel Mob member talks about the gangs not needing to fight each other, but the government.

The footage then cuts to Leoni who is wearing a Labour party jacket.