Making a mess of political management

BY COLIN ESPINER

If this National-led Government was at university, it would be the most popular dunce in its class.

National continues to score a D-minus in the basics of political management. Last week was an absolute shocker.

You wouldn't ask this lot to organise your child's birthday party, based on the mess it made of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) broadcasting rights and proposed ACC changes.

Former prime minister Jenny Shipley once said the first thing she did in the morning was "count".

Doing the numbers is Politics 101, but clearly ACC Minister Nick Smith and Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee aren't much good at maths.

Smith released his draft ACC bill last week without checking he had the support to pass it, and Brownlee put the House into urgency to debate it without the go-ahead from at least one support party.

The Maori Party is in no mood to help out National after the debacle over Maori Television's RWC bid, and ACT sees its chance to force National to consider opening up ACC to competition before it pledges its votes.

This doesn't resonate much outside Wellington, of course. The rest of New Zealand has more important things to worry about than National's procedural blunders.

What does reverberate is the contents of Smith's proposed legislation, should he finally find the numbers to pass it. The massive rise in registration levies for motorcycles is ostensibly because motorcyclists are involved in more accidents, and it costs ACC more to patch them up.

This was a political decision. There are fewer motorcyclists than car drivers, and probably most are not National voters.

However, angering even a minority group can be dangerous. National is likely to face the wrath of irate bikers descending on Wellington over the next few weeks.

They could rub shoulders with unlikely allies in the form of survivors of sexual abuse who plan marches around the country to protest against changes toughening the criteria for ACC support.

National can probably also remove the families of those who have committed suicide from its supporters after Smith's clanger about "finding myself a train to throw myself under". Smith was attempting to explain why the Government had decided it would no longer allow ACC to provide support to the victims of suicide (basically, suicide isn't an accident). However, his remark was not only incredibly insensitive, it implied New Zealanders were killing themselves to win compensation for their families.

It's hard to know which part was more insulting.

That's before we even get to the general $300-odd extra a year the average worker will have to fork out in ACC earners' levies, which represents a pay cut in a year when few workers have had a pay rise.

National is doing its best to blame Labour for this steep increase in levies. It might be fair enough to do so, given the state of ACC's books. However, Labour isn't the government any longer.

While voters have forgiven National most of the belt- tightening this year, the statute of limitations on blaming Labour must be running out.

Perhaps the ACC announcement was handled so badly because National's brains trust had its eye on another ball, which half a dozen ministers fumbled more badly than the All Blacks' backline. On the one hand, the RWC saga has been an entertaining, harmless farce.

Certainly, the International Rugby Board must have wept with laughter at the sight of two government departments bidding against each other for the right to broadcast rugby matches in their own country.

More serious for the Government is what appears to have been alleged double-dealing by ministers who went behind the backs of their so-called political allies to try to scupper the Maori Television Service (MTS) bid.

We may never know whether Sport Minister Murray McCully or Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman leaked details of the MTS bid to TVNZ and TV3, but we do know they encouraged the counter-bid by the two big networks. Officially, the reason for the Government's short-lived backing for the rival bid was concern at MTS's ability to deliver 100 per cent coverage, plus the fact its minnow status could make it more difficult to obtain the necessary commercial leverage to put bums on seats in the stadiums.

However, one suspects there was a more deep-seated mistrust of MTS and its competence to handle such a big event, and a fear that it could all go pear- shaped in an election year.

The former head of MTS, political wannabe Derek Fox, has gone further, accusing the Government of a racist, neo-colonial attitude to MTS. Fox may be exaggerating, but he has a point.

McCully, in particular, has never liked MTS, once describing it as "an albatross round the Government's neck". It's also possible National was uneasy at the idea of rugby commentaries in te reo and how that might go down with its less- enlightened voters.

Whatever the rationale, the experience has certainly soured relations between National and the Maori Party, in spite of the best efforts of Prime Minister John Key and Maori Party co- leader Pita Sharples to shore them up.

Key and Sharples obviously have a strong rapport.

Key's intervention last week to pull the Government's counter-bid and send all the parties back to the drawing board was better late than never.

However, privately, Sharples and his colleagues are seriously peeved with National, and it's going to take more than Key's personal charm to mollify them.

National will take comfort from its continued stellar performance in the polls, which, in politics, is the only exam that really matters.

Even so, National needs to show it is more competent at the basics of government than last week would attest.

- © Fairfax NZ News