Politics
Another closed gate
by Jane Clifton
Another ministerial outrage gets shoved into the bain-marie with other much-warmed-over scandals.
It’s getting very samey. Minister behaves badly. Gets found out. Is suspended. Insanely long, drawn-out inquiry follows. Dance of seven veils by PM accompanies long wait for final draft of report. Numerous Umbrian summer retreats for lawyers and their families are funded in the interim. Report is sufficiently inconclusive that no further action need be taken. MP gets seven bells knocked out of him behind scenes. Fronts up to media scrum with PM, and is defended stoutly. Displays carefully measured smidgen of remorse for “making a mistake”. Assumes right to get on with comfortable high-status life on public purse.
The Opposition and the media bay for blood for a few weeks. But soon it gets shoved into the bain-marie with other much-warmed-over scandals with “gate” after their names. Paintergate, speedgate, tennis-ballgate, front-bottomgate. A long, sorry list recited from time to time by the Opposition, their details forgotten.
Like all the other offences committed by Labour ministers, the daft and bad-smelling activities of Taito Phillip Field are destined to go into the Prime Minister’s file marked “Move On”.
However strong a case the Opposition makes, the government will not set up a second, more powerful inquiry. It will withstand a regular hammering in Parliament and in the media for the next couple of months. As it has done with every other storm, it will tough it out.
Labour is bloody good at this. It approaches each such situation like an acting assignment. MPs go to the House firmly in character, as brassily confident, triumphant, smug victors – not as people who are secretly ashamed of their colleague and thanking God that the QC’s report couldn’t quite nail him. They certainly don’t need to ask, “But what is my motivation?”
The details of Field’s case have been exhaustively rehearsed. More intriguing is what this affair reveals about the art of setting up an inquiry. Even if Helen Clark didn’t intend this inquiry to be delightfully inconclusive, she has set a new template for get-out-of-jail-free mechanisms.
By engaging a respected Queen’s Counsel, she ensured that it would be tough for anyone to criticise the process. And indeed, no one has seriously charged that he whitewashed the affair. By giving him no other powers than you or I might have for looking into this, Clark ensured it would be tough for him to get to the bottom of matters. It was a tacit invitation to Field to ration his co-operation and, as the report makes tactfully clear, that’s exactly what he did.
As for other witnesses, no one could seriously imagine that the aspiring immigrants – their English probably poor, their appreciation of officialdom probably fearful – would co-operate.
Now, whenever anyone finds fault with the report, Clark can counter that it’s disgraceful to attack a QC. Brilliant.
This method will no doubt become the standard remedy for future “gates”. There might, however, be a problem getting a QC to co-operate, given that the fees were probably scant compensation for the hassle.
What’s going on here is more arrogance than desperation on the government’s part. Clark refuses to be brought down by footling matters. She’s not going to let business like this get her into trouble with Pacific Island voters. It wouldn’t pay to overestimate her anxiety over that one-vote margin. Field’s seat is about as safely red as they come. Sure, Labour would cop a battering from outraged South Aucklanders, but it would be a major upset if it lost it in a by-election, even under these circumstances. It will have a cupboard full of impressive Pacific Island candidates, every bit as capable of commanding mass loyalty as Field, and probably more so.
Even if it did lose the seat, the government wouldn’t fall. It has enough confidence and supply sign-up among the smaller parties to survive in reasonable comfort. It would simply be more acutely at their mercy. That would be extremely character-building all round. It would, at worst, mean that Labour could not get everything it wanted through Parliament. That was always the way MMP was always supposed to work, but in practice, governments have mostly had their way. This slight tilting of the balance of power towards the minor parties would undoubtedly fatten up their votes, which would be a good thing for democracy.
Labour, understandably, could hardly be less interested in this possibility. A noisy and bitter by-election and the risk of numerical humiliation in Parliament are outcomes best avoided by any sensible government.
The other reason Labour doesn’t want to risk a standoff with Field is that its relationship with the Pacific community is so important. Cynics have observed that every election campaign, the Labour machine plugs itself into South Auckland and signs up PIs by the gross. The police traffic ticket quota system has nothing on it. On election day, no brown-skinned Aucklander is safe from offers of rides to a polling booth. An uninformed visitor might suspect some sinister ethnic roundup was in progress.
But even putting a more idealistic spin on this activity – as in, Labour is the natural party to represent often-struggling immigrants – these votes have saved Labour’s hide time and time again. And no more so than last election. It’s a big vote, and it’s a fast-growing vote. The brown population is essential to Labour’s future dominance.
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