DYSON ADMITS TEENAGE CANNABIS CONVICTION

Former government minister Ruth Dyson, who resigned her portfolios on
Tuesday after failing a breath alcohol test, said on Thursday she had been
convicted and fined for possessing cannabis when she was a teenager.

She said she had declared the conviction on every Labour Party nomination
form she had filled in and Prime Minister Helen Clark had been aware of it
for a long time.

"I find it sickening that some 25 years later someone has anonymously
passed this information to journalists," the 43-year-old Ms Dyson said in a
brief statement.

Some news media organisations are understood to have received anonymous
letters detailing the cannabis conviction.

A government spokesman said neither Ms Dyson nor Miss Clark would comment
further.

Ms Dyson was caught in an apparently random police check in the early hours
of Tuesday morning as she was driving to her Wellington home from Parliament.

She had earlier flown to the capital from Christchurch and was reported to
have drunk wine in the Koru Club at Christchurch Airport and on the flight
to Wellington.

She spent more than two hours in her Parliament office, when she is
believed to have drunk three more glasses of wine.

Ms Dyson is alleged to have recorded a breath alcohol level of 744
micrograms of alcohol a litre of breath. The legal limit is 400 mcg. She is
due to appear in court on December 4.

Ms Dyson handed her resignation to Miss Clark a few hours after being
breath-tested.

Miss Clark accepted it, saying she was sad and disappointed that Ms Dyson
had made a mistake but had done the right thing by resigning her
disability, associate health, social services and ACC portfolios. Ms Dyson
was a minister outside cabinet.

The prime minister said the resignation did not rule Ms Dyson out as a
minister in future. "It doesn't preclude Ruth returning at a future stage,"
she said.

Ms Dyson isn't the first minister to reveal a record.

Miss Clark sacked Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels earlier this year
after he was embroiled in a scandal over his criminal record involving
theft and assault convictions going back nearly 40 years. He was cleared of
allegations that he had sex with an under-age woman when he was a young
man. - NZPA