Over the weekend the usual rabble on Twitter started getting over-excited that there was another election scandal to come. The rumour mill did it’s job, and it rounded on two people. Paula Bennett and Winston Peters.

Only the National party were pushing the Winston Peters scandal. Everyone else was pushing Paula Bennett. This clearly showed that Peters’ “benefit problem” was a National hit. A clumsy one, as we found out last night, due to Peters simply paying back the overpayment and that’s the end of it.

As a story it was pushed out on a Sunday afternoon to clear the decks for the real story. The one that was supposed to dominate the news cycle into the election.

There have been a number of stories floating around about Paula Bennett. I know, I’ve investigated them many months ago. The reason you can’t read about them here is because even though it may be rooted in fact, there simply isn’t enough of it to make the story defamation-proof.

So I’ve been quite excited to see that the others may succeed where I have failed and managed to find that smoking gun.

This morning? Nothing.

It seems the various legal teams aren’t happy to sign off on a story they don’t think they can defend in a court room. And as we’ve seen a few weeks ago when other rumours were published, Paula Bennett climbed into them with legal papers quicker than you can say Colin Craig.

So it remains to be seen who wins: the legal team or the journalists. I hope it’s the journalists.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats. They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners. He is fearless in his pursuit of a story. Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him. To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue. http://whaleoil.co.nz