Hide needs the outspoken MP who's both liability and asset

BY COLIN ESPINER

OPINION: Can ACT'S David Garrett be a sensible man? Or should we have great hopes of finding him quite the reverse?

The moustache, the drinker's paunch, the hard-line, "hang-em high" attitudes - are on the outer in Parliament in the 21st century.

The so-called Wellington elite, the liberal intelligentsia and commentariat have sneered at Mr Garrett since he first emerged, blinking in the spotlight, shortly after the last election.

Mr Garrett sneaked into Parliament by the skin of his teeth. He was the fifth and final ACT MP to enter via the list, courtesy of his leader Rodney Hide's win in Epsom. Mr Garrett didn't do so well in his own electorate. Prime Minister John Key wiped the floor of Helensville with him, winning more than 23,000 votes to Mr Garrett's paltry 800-odd.

Before Parliament, Mr Garrett was known only as a vocal member of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, the hardline law-and-order lobby group whose name some believe to be one of the great oxymorons of the English language.

Quite how he ended up in Parliament is a mystery to most, including ACT itself. Mr Hide appears almost embarrassed by Mr Garrett, who is an ill fit in a party of liberal intellectuals.

Combining the political views of Bob Clarkson with the talent for self- promotion of Winston Peters, Mr Garrett has become Parliament's modern incarnation of Auckland Mayor John Banks. And he's just as polarising.

Mr Garrett's pronouncements last week on the highly charged issue of sterilisation appalled ACT and its senior partner in Government, the National Party. Mr Garrett's suggestion that child abusers be offered $5000 to undergo a surgical procedure rendering them unable to have children appeared ridiculous on the face of it.

Putting aside the various ethical dilemmas around preaching what is essentially a form of eugenics, there are more practical difficulties. Would, for instance, offering substantial cash rewards for child abuse actually promote criminality? Would the medical profession agree to conduct surgical procedures under such circumstances? Would it actually have any impact on the levels of child abuse anyway?

The technical difficulties of incentivised sterilisation were never debated, however, because most experts simply refused to take Mr Garrett seriously. The idea promoted by a backbench MP in a minor party does not even have the support of its leader, let alone the prime minister, who thought it was daft.

But Mr Garrett's comments lit a touchpaper on talkback radio, on blogs and other forums for debate online. Many of those commenting thought sterilisation too good for the average child abuser. If a poll had been taken on Mr Garrett's comments, he would have fared pretty well.

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It's true Mr Garrett is a square peg in a round hole. Goodness only knows what he and Sir Roger Douglas or deputy leader Heather Roy find to talk about around the caucus table. And, in a way, that neatly illustrates the wider issues facing the ACT Party.

A party founded by intellectuals and dry Right-wingers has been hijacked by the common man.

But Mr Garrett is also all that's standing between Mr Hide and a caucus revolt. Rumblings over his leadership are not new. It's common knowledge neither Sir Roger nor Ms Roy are supporters. Fellow ACT MP John Boscawen remains firmly in Mr Hide's camp, which leaves Mr Garrett as the casting vote.

That is the real reason Mr Hide bit his tongue last week and did not publicly admonish Mr Garrett.

ACT is meanwhile consumed by a philosophical struggle about what sort of party it wants to be.

As National drifts closer to the political centre and the country's big money backers grow frustrated by what they see as a lack of a radical reform agenda from the Government, ACT looms back in the frame as an outrider on the Right wing.

But the Trevor Farmers and Alan Gibbses of this world aren't interested in Mr Garrett's hardline law and order policies, or the sterilisation debate. They want economic reform. ACT also has all its eggs in one basket. While Mr Hide holds Epsom the party is safe. But no minor party likes one man or woman standing between it and electoral oblivion. It is essential ACT broadens its support base to give itself a chance of breaching the 5 per cent threshold in 2011.

Of course, the irony is that Mr Garrett is both an asset and a liability to ACT.

He may leave the neoliberals shaking their heads in disgust and Sir Roger tearing out what's left of his hair. But his populist rhetoric and buy-us-a-beer-shagger behaviour is probably more electorally appealing than that of his colleagues, who - Mr Hide excepted - couldn't win the local school raffle.

Mr Garrett might yet decide, like National's Bob Clarkson did, that Wellington and politics isn't for him. But Parliament needs people like them - if only to help define the boundaries of common sense.

- © Fairfax NZ News