Maverick MP tests common sense

BY COLIN ESPINER, POLITICAL EDITOR

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

The moustache and the hardline, "hang 'em high" attitudes are on the Parliament outer in the 21st century.

The so-called Wellington elite have sneered at Garrett since he emerged, blinking in the spotlight, shortly after the last election.

Garrett snuck 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.

Garrett did not do so well in his own electorate. Prime Minister John Key won more than 23,000 votes to Garrett's paltry 800-odd in Helensville.

Before Parliament, Garrett was a vocal member of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, a law-and-order lobby group, whose name some believe to be one of a great oxymoron.

Quite how he ended up in Parliament is a mystery to most, including ACT itself.

Hide appears almost embarrassed by Garrett, who is an ill-fit in a party of liberal intellectuals.

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

Garrett's pronouncements last week on sterilisation appalled ACT and its senior Government partner, the National Party.

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. For instance, would offering substantial cash rewards for child abuse actually promote criminality? Would the medical profession agree to conduct surgical procedures under such circumstances? Would it 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 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.

However, Garrett's comments lit a touch paper on talkback radio and on internet blogs and other online- debate forums. Many of those commenting thought sterilisation too good for the average child abuser.

If a poll had been taken on Garrett's comments, he would have fared pretty well. It is a classic example of the disconnect between governments, the so-called experts, and the people - particularly on law- and-order issues.

Garrett's solution to child abuse might be bizarre, distasteful, and even Orwellian. However, a lot of people probably share his opinion.

Why, then, was he silenced so quickly?

Was Hide afraid Garrett would embarrass the Government? Are ACT MPs no longer allowed to speak out on conscience issues? Or was it a case of frustration from Hide that a minor MP has been hogging the limelight?

It is true 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, this neatly illustrates the wider issues facing ACT.

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

Hide, himself the son of a truck driver, worked on oil rigs before going into politics - as did Garrett.

Both remain in touch with their working-class roots, although Hide has learnt the art of diplomacy and realpolitik.

Garrett is unreconstructed, like Clarkson before him. What comes out of his mouth is what he really thinks. And, sometimes, it is not pretty.

After making lewd comments to an ACT female staffer he apologised by saying his behaviour "might have been OK in a law firm in Tonga".

He once told prisoners worried about the high incidence of prison rape that they should have thought about that before they committed a crime.

However, Garrett is also all that is standing between Hide and a Caucus revolt. Rumblings over his leadership are not new. It is common knowledge neither Douglas nor Roy are supporters.

Fellow ACT MP John Boscawen remains firmly in Hide's camp, which leaves Garrett the casting vote.

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

Of course, ACT MPs would need their heads read to roll Hide.

It would be a case of turkeys voting for a very premature Christmas.

Hide also has the support of Key, who has already made it clear the supply-and-confidence deal with ACT would be history if Hide were toppled.

However, the drums are beating.

It is not so much a matter of Hide's public stumbles last year over his use of perks; it goes deeper than that.

ACT is involved in 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 in the frame as an outrider on the Right wing.

However, the Trevor Farmers and Alan Gibbs of this world are not interested in Garrett's hardline law- and-order policies, or the sterilisation debate. They want economic reform.

ACT once prided itself on being a party of influence. Now, it is a party of Government, but not a terribly influential one.

As the next election draws closer, debate will intensify over whether propping up National remains the best course.

ACT also has all its eggs in one basket.

While Hide holds the Epsom seat, the party is safe. However, 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 next year.

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

He might leave the neo-liberals shaking their heads in disgust and Douglas tearing out what is left of his hair. However, his populist rhetoric is probably more electorally appealing than that of his colleagues, who - Hide excepted - could not win the local school raffle.

Garrett might yet decide, as Clarkson did, that Wellington and a life in politics are not for him.

However, Parliament needs politicians such as them - if only to help define the boundaries of common sense.

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