Spare Room Be our guest…

By Kirk MacGibbon

There’s been a lot written lately about the remarkable Mr Key. It’s now been one year or thereabouts, since the election and the media are big on anniversaries. We’ve also heard lots about National’s honeymoon and how long it’s lasted. That’s rubbish. To still talk of a honeymoon would be to suggest that the period is only brought to an end when poll ratings dip or the media decide they no longer ‘like’ the Government.

National is not still on its honeymoon. Far more mundane, they’ve quickly settled into married life. It’s really only John ‘Al Bundy’ Key and the children that are attracting attention with their shouting and posturing.

It’s dangerous to ascribe much at all to voter sentiment at this stage of the electoral cycle. Politics is generally flying under the radar of most voters. People are in survival mode and as far as they’re concerned they’ve changed the government and don’t need to be giving politicians much thought at all.

As for the popularity of John Key, there’s no secret to it other than perhaps viewing it as an extraordinary solo rendition of The Importance of Being Earnest. Whether it’s deliberate or not is debatable but let’s face it, Key is not in any danger of being called ‘prime ministerial’.

What he’s ‘doing’ is the old kiwi notion of ‘his best’. He’s giving it a go and not getting involved in any of the politics around the issues of the day. Not setting the world on fire, but that’s not what we voted him in to do anyway. True, on closer analysis Key still appears more chimera than champion, but $50 million or not, he seems to have muddled his way into the general mood of the electorate. He might be rich, but he certainly doesn’t look rich and he definitely doesn’t behave rich. I guess it’s his state house roots, but he seems to be coming closest to emulating Mike Moore’s incredible success in building and representing a broad consensus around personal principles that are never really clearly articulated, but seem like common sense anyway.

Key just isn’t all that political, and that is kind of refreshing when compared with the journeyman political faces surrounding him, from Goff and King on the Opposition benches, to English, McCully and Smith behind him. When National are re-elected in two year’s time, it will not be down to anything other than ‘Key hasn’t done a bad job. He deserves another term.’ He’ll have ‘managed’ things well. It must be great being a Tory PM: You’re not actually expected to do anything. That’s what the Labour party are for, and unfortunately for Phil Goff, it will be another six years before we’re sick to death of National.

But at least for his successor there will be plenty of things to fix, starting with, I suspect, our foreign relations policy, which Murray McCully will have trampled into what I’ll label strategic bilateralism if we’re lucky. Multilateralism doesn’t get you to Washington. ACC will be a blancmange just waiting for a new Minister after Nick Smith has finished with his blundering . We’ll have lots more roads though, which is good, and some celebrity twat operating under the delusion that he’s running Auckland and expecting us to call him Lord Mayor or something – but I’m getting ahead of myself…

While we don’t expect Key to do anything, we’re not all that impressed with anyone who actually comes out and confirms it. It’s not the New Zealand way to tell tales; just not cricket. A game that Rodney Hide is unlikely to have played. Although I’m sure he’s enjoyed the spectacle many times from the comfort and luxury provided via someone else’s corporate box. I’m loathe to write any more about Hide, because it makes me have to actually think about him, which makes me nauseous. He is an irrelevance and if we have to leave him alone to play with his local authority train set, then so be it. There’s nothing he can do that can’t be undone. Except perhaps the damage that he is doing to the reputation of MMP.

I find it a rich irony that perhaps the biggest potential driver of voter dissatisfaction with our current voting system are the actions of two greedy, grasping, unpleasant little men from two minor parties that owe their very existence largely to MMP. They’ve clearly risen far above their natural station and rationalised their way into a belief that they’re entitled to everything they can get while the going is good.

Hide will get his comeuppance at the next election: the people of Epsom in all likelihood would forgive him his rank hypocrisy, after all it’s a big part of their everyday lives. But having to endure short, fat, bald men parading around taking the credit for everything and indulging a penchant for overseas hotel rooms and blonde floozies (even champion squash playing ones) nearly half their age will be way too close to the bone, I suspect.

Hone Harawira is an altogether different beast. Hide is just an old white man making a fool of himself, like all old white men are wont to do. It’s sad, but we’ve all seen it before. Harawira is an angry brown man with a chip on his shoulder the size of Tane Mahuta, and a burning desire to make us all pay (him, initially) but then all his people for the injustices perpetrated by our greedy, grasping ancestors. He is consequently far more dangerous: a morally bankrupt, delusional underachiever with an overblown sense of entitlement and a belief that his cause provides him with all the justification he needs to do whatever the hell he wants, at anyone else’s expense. I guess he got that from his mother.

His language shows far more than intemperance. It highlights a very unpleasant fact, which is that underlying all the goodwill built up over the past 20 years or so via Treaty settlements and legislation, there are a significant minority of Maori that believe that events of history justify any actions that ‘make the white man pay’, whether that involves skiving off to Paris at taxpayers’ expense, ripping off the welfare system or asserting control over public domains.

He is the unpleasant face of Maoridom. Not interested in restitution (although he’ll take it if offered) so much as retribution or utu. He is every bit as racist and calculating as the white power, white trash skinheads of Christchurch and it brings the reputation of Parliament no good for his like to sully its corridors. I hope he pays a price, but I’m not confident: with the support of his Te Tai Tokerau electorate he’s pretty much untouchable – and there’s plenty of them who no doubt would share his belief that he’s entitled to grab as much as he can.

At the end of the day, while they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum both Hide and Harewira have one thing in common: they are politicians and as far as the fate of MMP is concerned it is politicians and politics, rather than issues of representation or governance, that will have the biggest impact. It was the antics of politicians (and of course Peter Shirtcliffe) that ultimately did for First Past the Post. After the hypocrisy of Bolger in 1991, people wanted to make politicians pay and the referendum was as good a vehicle as any.

But all of this will do little to dent the popularity of John Key, who just may be forging a new paradigm for both politics and politicians. No longer is it necessary for a political leader to be steeped in the Parliamentary process. It is yet another demonstration of the slow ‘presidentialisation’ of New Zealand politics, started by Mike Moore in 1993. Key has shown that a leader no longer has to come from within the ranks of the party faithful. He or she can be brought in from anywhere, provided they can demonstrate a broad-based appeal.

For the first time in our history we have a person with very little political experience running the country and his very non-politicalness is proving very effective against his political opponents.

Key is also an antidote to the current claptrap about Parliamentary perks and the Speaker’s observation that if the perks were to disappear then MP’s pay would have to increase. As an independently wealthy man, Key has no need of perks and his salary is an irrelevance. Too many of the current crop of MPs view Parliament as a lucrative career option that pays well above what most of them could hope to earn in the private sector.

Perhaps we should consider reducing Parliamentary pay, to a point where it is seen once again as a public service, rather than private sinecure?