Well we were spared the icy Amy Adams, and the feisty Paula Bennett remains as Deputy Leader of the National Party. So there is some good news for those of us who believe that it’s at least preferable that our leaders present a tolerably pleasing impression to the rest of the world.

I’m on shaky ground here, I know. New Zealanders have the admirable quality of placing greater weight on substance than appearance or mellifluous voices in choosing their political leaders. Think Savage, Kirk, Rowling, Key, Clark… But their tolerance for idiosyncrasy is not without limit. Bob Jones effectively put an end to Rowling’s career by dubbing him ‘the mouse’ on account of his very light voice.

I have reason to remember this particularly well. In a previous incarnation I hosted a late night TV show called Edwards On Saturday. We had Bill and Glen Rowling on one night as the main guests. Glen played the piano and Bill talked to me. The programme was broadcast live.

About half way through, as I was interviewing Bill, there was a minor commotion. Bob Jones walked in through the studio door accompanied by a human-sized mouse on a leash, squeaking. Inside the mouse costume was broadcaster Jim Healey. Bob had told security that he and Healey (sans mouse costume) were late guests on the programme and been allowed in.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this guest appearance of ‘Mouse Rowling’ was a factor in ending a very decent politician’s career.

You may not like it but, in politics, image really matters.

I like Bill. Bill is just great. Really, really great. And – sorry to blow my own trumpet – but if anyone should know, I should. Well, me and Judy really – the team that brought you Helen Clark. Back from the dead, some would say, but I couldn’t possibly comment. Anyway, back to Bill. Did I say Bill was great? What an understatement! Bill is stupendous, charismatic, a master of oratory and, no point in denying it, a real stud. The stats never lie. And here’s the thing: I’m a dyed in the wool Labour man. A socialist, to be strictly accurate. So this is really tough for me to have to say. But hey, truth is more important than politics. And it will out. Bill is supercalifragalistic, expial… Oh never mind. Bloody brilliant on the box too. And if anyone should know, I should. Did I say that already? Never mind, the truth will out. And here’s the acid test: if I had to choose between watching a 45-minute interview with Bill on some TV show on Sunday morning and watching Paula Bennett figure skating naked on ice, I’d pick Bill. And so would Judy. Charisma, mastery of the language, sex appeal. It’d be riveting, wouldn’t  it? Think of Bill as a rivet: solid, reliable, holding things together, grey-coloured. So please, please, please pick Bill to lead you into the next election. If only to please me and Judy and Labour Party voters from the Cape to the Bluff. Bill’s your man. And mine. Thanks. Brian

Being a media trainer is a bit like being a singing teacher.You have to have a very good ear. It’s not merely about being able to correct glaring examples of poor pronunciation, diction or tone. John Key’s tendency to insert a ‘sh’ into certain words usually before a ‘t’, producing a somewhat Germanic ‘sch’ sound (Aushtralia), and Helen Clark’s rather mannish tone and overly forceful delivery both invited derision and had the potential to prematurely end their stellar careers.

I once had the opportunity of giving a few pointers to John Key on his interviewee performance. TVNZ had decided to arrange some interview training for its high-profile newsreaders, including Simon Dallow. Each had to arrive with a guest of their own choosing, whom they would interview under the critical eye of Brian Edwards and Judy Callingham. Simon introduced us to his choice of interviewee, a chap called John Key, whom I had not only never met, but never heard of.

The mysterious Mr Key was pleasant, agreeable, made a few nervous jokes and did a perfectly competent couple of interviews with Simon. When it was over, Judy and I make some helpful suggestions to Mr Key, thanked him for coming and then spent some time chatting to Simon about improving his already proficient interviewing style.

John Key would eventually become Leader of the Opposition. I have to say that neither Judy nor I would have considered, let alone predicted that outcome, as he left the training studios in Shortland Street.

In 1997 Jenny Shipley became the first female prime Minister of New Zealand when Jim Bolger resigned rather than face almost certain defeat in a coup which Shipley had brokered while Bolger was overseas.

Helen Clark deeply resented the fact that Shipley became New Zealand’s first female Prime Minister without ever going to the country. It was, she said, like climbing Everest only to find that your opponent had already got there by helicopter.

Our association with Helen Clark began in 1996 when I was standing in for Kim Hill on her 9am National Radio programme Nine to Noon. The schedule included a longish interview with the Leader of the Opposition. In the course of the interview, I said to Helen that I didn’t think she looked very happy.

Later that day her secretary rang to ask if I could spare the time to come and speak to Helen. We met and she told me that she had been taken aback by my saying that she didn’t look very happy. She wondered if I might be interested in assisting her to improve her personal and Labour’s poll ratings which were then dire. I’m not proud of my response which was to the effect that I thought her situation was “unfixable”.

That is one of the more egregious errors of judgment I have made in my career as a media trainer. Fortunately I had the opportunity to put it right. Helen Clark would eventually win three general elections and a reputation as one of this country’s finest Prime Ministers.

My other egregious error was in writing off John Key in similar fashion. As Helen’s advisors, including Judy and myself, sat around discussing tactics for the first Leaders’ Television Debate of the 2008 election, the general tone was to the effect that the outcome was pretty well a foregone conclusion. Key could not possibly win. Helen was his intellectual and tactical superior. It was no contest.

Key won that debate hands down. It was as if he had changed personality overnight. The quiet, gentlemanly, sometimes humorous Leader of the Opposition was loud, interruptive, aggressive, dismissive and contemptuous of his opponent.

Helen would, in our assessment, score marginal wins in the two remaining debates.But it is extremely difficult to come back from a first debate defeat.

Media trainers are bound to get it wrong one day. The closeness to your clients blinds you to their weaknesses and to your clients’ opponents’ strengths.

I have unbounded admiration for Helen Clark who is today a mover and shaker in the much wider world of international politics.

But though Michelle Boag and I have played political conkers on Jim Mora’s ‘The Panel’ for several years now, I also admire and like John Key. I rate him as a highly successful New Zealand Prime Minister, who, like his predecessor, has done great service for his country. Maybe the best thing you can say about any male politician is, ‘Seems like a nice guy’. John Key seems to me like a nice guy. And his resignation from the top job is manna from heaven for the Opposition.

Is that the stirring of excitement of a frustrated political media trainer that I feel coursing through my veins? Or the horror of thinking that our next PM might just be Paula Bennett?

Check the flights to Belfast for me, would you, Judy dearest!

I generally define myself as ‘a Socialist’. This may seem at odds with living in the most expensive suburb in New Zealand, having no mortgage or other indebtedness, dining out on a regular basis, treating Rarotonga as you might treat a bach and, in general, being what people euphemistically call ‘comfortably off’.

If I were a supporter of the National Party, I’d probably argue that being ‘comfortably off’ was the product of more than seven decades of application and hard work and that, if I could do it, every other able-bodied and averagely intelligent Kiwi should be able to do the same. We aren’t a Third World country after all.

That would be a dishonest argument because I’m one of the laziest people you could hope to meet, rarely apply myself to anything for long and have got through life largely on my wits, a unique ability to read other people and, according to the late lamented Rob Muldoon, ‘an intriguing Irish accent’.

I can’t claim responsibility for any of those characteristics. Heredity and environment combined to make me what I am. I’m what they call a ‘hard determinist’. But that’s another story. Except for this: you can’t be a hard determinist and judge other people as if they were the authors of their own misfortunes – or fortunes.

If this sounds a bit nutty, the science of genetics is very much on my side. On almost a daily basis we are discovering that this or that characteristic, trait, predisposition, behaviour is genetically determined. Even the psychopath has a defence – there’s an important bit missing from his brain. 

I was kind of lucky. My father was a drunk, wife-beater, embezzler and bigamist. Despite this, his first wife told Judy and me she would have ‘walked over broken glass for him’. His second, my mother, also went on loving him despite everything, including the fact that he deserted both of us when I was two. He was a charming con man. I have that in my genes. It’s at war with my mother’s upright Protestant ethics. It turned out to be a surprisingly good combination.

I could claim too that my Socialist instincts arose from the fact that that we grew up poor. To be the child of a solo mother was a rarer thing in those days. We lived for most of my childhood in lodgings and later in a council flat. But the truth is that, thanks to my mother’s industry  and selflessness, I really lacked for nothing, except a dad.

What this background has produced is a showman  – or ‘showbiz charlatan’ as a friend and broadcasting colleague once described me – who could quite easily have crossed the line into criminal behaviour, were it not for his mother’s voice in his head. . And it’s this “There, but for the grace of heredity and environment, go I” mentality that makes me reluctant to judge those who fall down in life or break the rules. You’ll find evidence of that reluctance throughout the columns on this site.

And the ‘Socialist’? Well, it comes down to this: I think I’m lucky to be ‘comfortably off’, lucky not to be at the bottom of the social heap and lucky not to be in prison. It has nothing to do with application, hard work or moral uprightness.

So I’m a believer in passing on that good fortune to those less lucky than me. In practical terms that means the re-distribution through progressive taxation of wealth from the rich and fortunate to the poor and less fortunate in order to ensure  the availability of free education, health and social welfare services to every New Zealander. You can bring on a capital gains tax, including on housing speculation. I won’t complain.

All of this came to mind when I read this morning that the final stage of the National Government’s welfare reforms comes into force today. The Herald is running a three-part investigation into how the changes are affecting people’s lives, using  Papakura as a litmus test of their effect.

A moving force in these ‘reforms’ has been former social welfare beneficiary Paula Bennett who, as a solo mother and university student, received state assistance to look after her daughter and to pursue a tertiary education. She entered Parliament in 2005 as a National Party list MP and  has had a highly successful political career. She is currently Minister for Social Development, Employment and Youth Affairs.

The juxtaposition of Paula Bennett’s past and present lifestyles has inevitably invited criticism. The former beneficiary of government support now earns a base salary of $260,000 a year plus a range of perks and allowances amounting to tens of thousands of dollars more. ‘Comfortable’ would be an understatement of her position. She now lives a life of considerable privilege.

She deserves, I would argue, recognition and praise for what she has achieved.

Yet there is no-one in Parliament whom I hold in less regard. Under the guise of reform in her portfolio areas, she has, in my submission, revealed herself as a punisher rather than a defender of those at the bottom of the social heap, of the very group to which she herself once belonged. The irony of her position is inescapable.

Someone told me that during the last general election, one of her billboards in Waitakere was defaced with the words ‘class traitor’. If the story is true, the words were ill judged.  Bennett  is, it seems to me, a traitor not to any class or social group but to her own past. And the damage which that inexplicable treachery has done, and continues to do to the lives and happiness of thousands of Kiwi men, women and children who have fallen down in life or broken the rules, is substantial, and will continue and get worse.

Pretty harsh judgement from someone who writes, “You can’t be a hard determinist and judge other people as if they were the authors of their own misfortunes – or fortunes.” I guess that ought to apply to the Honourable Paula Bennett as well. But I’m too angry to be completely rational on this topic.  Sometimes you have to let your heart rule your intellect.

Call me a sentimental Socialist. I like that better than ‘Swimming Pool Socialist’ which National Party friends occasionally accuse me of being.

It’s unfair. We haven’t got a swimming pool.

Image created by Alison Withers

                            AND TRAITOR TO HER PAST

Today’s Herald makes interesting reading for anyone who thinks that, despite his Wall Street millions, John Key’s state house background makes him more sympathetic to those on lower incomes. GST is to rise by up to 2.5%. Such an increase disproportionately penalises those at the bottom of the economic heap – lower income earners and beneficiaries – since a much greater proportion of their income is spent on essential items such as food, power and rent. They are to be compensated by an unspecified decrease in personal taxation and an unspecified increase in benefits and Working for Families.

On last night’s Campbell Live, the Prime Minister gave Campbell a guarantee that lower income earners or beneficiaries would be no worse off after the changes in the budget. ‘No worse off’, but not necessarily ‘any better off’. Middle and higher income earners, on the other hand,  will of course be better off as a result of any decrease in income tax, since that is an economic truism. So, in a nutshell, the rich will get richer and the poor stay where they are, which in real terms means ‘go backwards’.

Meanwhile, the Herald’s page 3 headline read: ‘Tough new welfare laws loom this year’. That other traitor to her class, sometime beneficiary Paula Bennett, was announcing measures to force solo parents, receiving the domestic purposes benefit with children over the age of  6, into the workforce. Under the policy they would be required to ‘actively look for a job, to go to any job interview they are referred to, and to accept any offer of suitable employment, whether fulltime, part-time, temporary or seasonal… If they do not comply with these obligations, they will have their benefit reduced in the first instance, then suspended, then cancelled.’ Ms Bennett does not say how they will then feed their children.

Leaving aside the fact that forcing solo parents back into the workforce at a time of relatively high unemployment, when thousands of Kiwis are losing their jobs, makes little sense,  the policy, which is unlikely to boost the government’s coffers by much, is primarily designed to appeal to right-wing prejudice against solo parents and welfare beneficiaries in general. As for Ms Bennett, she has a very highly paid job herself now and will be even more highly paid when the government’s promised tax cuts come into force.

On page 4 of the Herald, Corrections Minister Judith Collins, responding to Corrections staff protests that salaries in private prisons would be much lower than in the public system and that the private prisons would provide inferior service at a greater cost, said that since the prison population would continue to grow, ‘if people are working in the private prison and they don’t like the wages, they can go and work in the public sector.’ Translation: ‘Every cloud has a silver lining. Thanks to our bankrupt justice policies, more and more people will be going to prison, so there will be more and more job opportunities for people in the prison service.’

It’s perhaps worth noting that around half of those new inmates will be Maori and almost all of them will come from the very bottom of the socio-economic heap – John Key’s ‘underclass’.

No doubt both state-house Key and beneficiary Bennett would reject any suggestion of prejudice against the underprivileged, given their own backgrounds. But the fact is that as people climb the money ladder or rise up the social scale, their sympathies change accordingly. I’ve experienced this myself. Like John Key, I was the son of a solo mother and I was raised either in lodgings or in council flats. We were extremely poor. For most of my early married life and career, my family and I lived on the bones of our bums. I had no time for people with money and my politics were to the far left.

As things got better and I moved from ‘comfortable’ to ‘well off’ – I have never been rich – I began to see things differently. Rather than unquestioningly accepting that the poor could not be blamed for their poverty, I began to adopt the view, ‘If I can make it by having ambition and working hard, why can’t they?’ I was not unsympathetic, but less sympathetic.

So I have no doubt that when people graduate from one socio-economic group to another, their sympathies move with them.

And this, after all, is a National Government. Key and Bennett may have impoverished backgrounds, but their sympathies now lie with the rich and not with the poor. Why else would they be members of the National Party?

And all the photo ops in the world, all the Prime Minister’s ‘niceness’  cannot conceal that fact. Ask Joan Nathan, she of the McGehan Close ‘underclass’. Joan now feels that she has been let down by the PM and says that, despite her limo ride with nice Mr Key,  her daughter Aroha wants nothing to do with him. She says she and her family are worse off since National won the election. She’s pretty ‘anti John Key at the moment’. Ouch!

What Joan has learnt is that state house leopards do change their spots. But they do it so slowly, you barely notice. That’s what camouflage is all about.

Last night’s Close Up and Campbell Live both debated Social Welfare Minister Paula Bennett’s decision to publish details of the benefits received by two women who have gone public with their criticisms of the government’s cuts to the Training Incentive Allowance.

There are two issues here: Was it appropriate for a Minister of the Crown to publish personal details relating to the benefits paid to clients of her department without first seeking  their permission or informing them of her intention? And did her action amount to a breach of the Privacy Act?

 Ms Bennett denies having breached the Privacy Act. According to this morning’s Herald, her denial is based on guidelines for ministers and departmental officials laid down by the Privacy Commission.

One relates to any “authorisation” for the disclosure given by the individual, including “implicit” authorisation. This is clearly not the situation here. No such authorisation was given.

The other guideline seems to come closer to the mark:

“By releasing a large amount of personal information to the media the individual is taking the risk that unfavourable publicity could result. If the minister releases only information which is relevant to the issues raised by the individual, that person may not be able to claim that any particular harm was caused by the minister’s disclosure rather than by the individual’s own disclosure.”

The important words here are “relevant to the issues raised by the individual”.

Were the amounts currently being received in benefits by the two complainants relevant to their criticism of the Government’s intention to cut the Training Incentive Allowance?  The answer to that question can only be ‘yes’ if it demonstrates that the cutting of the allowance will not unreasonably affect them, since their income from benefits is adequate or more than adequate to allow them to continue studying.

But it would not be possible to answer that question without knowing everything about the women’s current financial obligations which in turn would necessitate delving into almost every aspect of their personal lives. That, the Minister herself told Mark Sainsbury, was unacceptable: “I don’t know every detail about them and so I shouldn’t.”

Yet without the context of that detail, the material she chose to publish was meaningless and probably misleading. For that reason alone, it should never have been made public.

Concentration on whether the Minister breached privacy laws is, however, merely a distraction from the central issue here – abuse of power. Ms Bennett’s constant appeal to her own experience as a beneficiary completely misses the point that she is no longer a beneficiary, that she is now a Minister of the Crown, enjoying considerable influence over the lives of other less fortunate people and living a lifestyle which those people could barely imagine. At the nub of this issue is the imbalance of power between Ms Bennett and the two complainants. Her access to a huge publicity machine alone gives her enormous advantage over her critics.

Beyond that, the powerful have an obligation to show restraint in their dealings with the less powerful, on occasion even when they are in the right. Politicians are quite properly expected to have thicker skins than private citizens. This is in part because the effect of their words and actions on the private citizen will be so much greater than the effect of that citizen’s words on them. When an individual criticises a politician, particularly a Minister of the Crown, it is water off the politician’s back. When a politician, particularly a Minister of the Crown, publicly criticises an individual, the effect can be devastating.

Sue Bradford commented on Close Up that Bennett’s handling of this affair reminded her of Rob Muldoon. The comparison was apt. Muldoon abused his power. He did so by dropping the full weight of his prime ministerial office on the head of anyone who criticised him, generally by attacking them personally. He was a bully, someone who uses his advantage in size, strength or power to overcome his opponent. Bennett is in the same mould.  

Like most bullies, faced with a stronger opponent, Bennett began not merely to back off but to attempt to recast her actions as support for the two women. She wasn’t “beneficiary bashing” she told Mark Sainsbury. She wasn’t even “having a crack at them”. She “welcomed public debate”. She even admired the women who were “feisty and gutsy and good on them”.

She took the same approach with John Campbell. Again accused of branding beneficiaries as “ungrateful bludgers”, she feigned righteous indignation: “I take umbrage on their behalf.”

The sheer dishonestly of all of this beggars belief. Closer to the truth was her later observation to Sainsbury that her actions were intended as “a bit of a lesson for what happens if you go out there and put your story.” As Sue Bradford observed, this was and was intended to be “a dangerous message to beneficiaries”. In other words: “Pour encourager les autres!”

My personal view is that Bennett is not fit to be a minister. She has neither the intelligence nor the judgement nor, it now seems, the compassionate restraint appropriate to her particular portfolio. That will not of course be the view of the nation’s talk-back callers who, in intellect and thoughtfulness,  are her true constituency.

You really have to wonder how much longer John Key can keep the Blethering Bennett in his Cabinet. Here is her latest effort, reported in this morning’s Herald:

Ms Bennett today said she had reiterated to Ms Rankin Mr Key’s position that she should not campaign against the law.

“She certainly been made very clear that we don’t expect her to be actively campaigning on the no vote,” she told reporters.

Ms Bennett said the interview was Ms Rankin’s personal opinion.

“I think it’s pretty clear that Christine Rankin was speaking as Christine Rankin and not as families commissioner and in that case I thought it was quite acceptable.”

Ms Rankin was entitled to her own opinion, she said.

“I think that when she’s speaking as a families commissioner then she is with them on what they are doing but I think that she’s entitled to her view as long as she’s not actively campaigning against the commission, and what they believe, she is allowed to put a view forward.”

Asked what actively campaigning was, Ms Bennett said Ms Rankin should follow the commission’s rules and policies.

The stupidity of these comments beggars belief. Does Ms Bennett really think that a Government appointed member of the board of an autonomous Crown agency can publicly express opinions directly at odds with the policy of that agency on the grounds that these are her personal opinions?

How is the public to know at any given time which hat Ms Rankin is wearing, when she is speaking as Ms Rankin [private citizen]   and when as Families Commissioner Rankin?

According to The Blethering One, Christine Rankin should  simultaneously “follow the Commission’s rules and policies” and not follow them.

Good grief!  Was I too kind in calling her an idiot?

The woman is a blethering idiot.

Watch her on Sunday