A Clayton's bid for attention

There's been a fair amount of testosterone sloshing around Parliament in the last few days. With the Prime Minister on the road in permanent campaign mode, some of her junior ministers have been outdoing themselves in an attempt to get media headlines.

Those doing the most swaggering are Associate Justice Minister Clayton Cosgrove and Building and Construction Minister Shane Jones. Both men have leadership ambitions and high opinions of themselves, but recently they seem to have pushed the "hyperbole'' button.

Jones, who's been spotted going on "boot camp'' runs in the early morning as he attempts to trim down, claimed this week that not only was he going to cut red tape in the building industry, he was going to "take a chainsaw to it''. Ouch.

He's also taken to the airwaves, following in the footsteps of fellow good keen Labour men like John Tamihere, filling in as a talkback host, presumably to strengthen his credentials as a centrist Kiwi bloke.   

But Jones has been left in the shade by Cosgrove. We're getting used to the minister's "I'm gonna run dodgy real estate agents out of town'' Bush-isms but things reached a new level this week when the MP for Waimakariri pulled the old "If I'm too tough then too bad'' line out of the hat.

"National Party leader John Key has admitted that reform of the sector is needed but he opposes the (Real Estate Agents Bill) because he doesn't like my tough guy approach,'' said Cosgrove with a straight face. Shrugging off what was left of his self-effacement, Cosgrove went on: "If protecting consumers from getting ripped off and supporting honest real estate agents is being tough, then I am guilty as charged.''

Good grief. It's Cosgrove versus Key at the OK Corral.

Cosgrove made a couple of other quite extraordinary claims during the week, too. First, he said real estate agents had met top Fairfax executives in an attempt to heavy them into writing nicer things about the industry, and threatened to pull advertising if they didn't agree.

Then he said National had stitched up a secret deal with the institute to overturn the Real Estate Agents Bill if it got into government. He even hinted the institute was funding part of National's election campaign.

He made these claims without any proof, besides the hearsay claim of an anonymous real estate agent-turned-informer, who claimed he'd heard institute president Murray Cleland tell a regional branch meeting in Palmerston North about it.

Both have been rejected by Fairfax, the institute, and National, which says it has no such deal with the institute.

I'm sure there is a grain of truth in what Cosgrove alleges. The institute did meet with Fairfax executives, and I'm sure it expressed its dismay at the reporting of some cases involving agents, and I'm sure Fairfax gave them a fair hearing and promised to look into it. That's what one does when an irate customer bails you up.

And of course National MPs have met with the institute - as have Labour MPs, and indeed MPs from all parties. It's called lobbying. What Cosgrove is trying to say, however, is that meetings with the Government are fine, but meetings with newspaper executives or the National Party are immediately suspicious.

One of the reasons for Cosgrove's anger could be the fact that his bill is losing support. NZ First has indicated it has problems with it, National says it won't vote for it, and neither will United Future or Act.

But he may be the victim of his own moderate success as a politician, too. The tough-guy routine works OK for a while, but at some point change needs to be effected by getting alongside your enemies, not trying to run them out of town all the time.

Cosgrove could probably have kept both National and NZ First onside with a little attitude change on his part, but he doesn't appear to have cottoned on to this yet. If he wants to become more than just an attack politician, Cosgrove needs some lessons in diplomacy.