English has blown chance to mine Cup euphoria

TKey was shameless when it came to inveigling himself into successes he had nothing to do with. He all but had his own locker in the All Blacks’ changing rooms.

he same winds that flew Emirates Team NZ over the America’s Cup finish line also brought some much needed relief to Prime Minister Bill English. It capped off a week in which English was caught in the quagmire of his own making over what he had known about Todd Barclay recording a staff member and why he had not done anything about it.

For days on end, he had added and added and added to his version of events — apparently desperate to do penance for the long period of silence he had put himself through in the 18 months before.

Sometimes the things he was adding did not add up with the things he had added before.

Finally, on Monday, the former Finance Minister found he could add no more. He said this 12 times, in case it was not clearly understood: “I have nothing to add.”

He was saved by the Auld Mug. Team NZ’s win turned eyes to more uplifting events and questions turned to topics he was more familiar with — money.

Just as hindsight would have saved him much grief over the Barclay affair, so too would it have helped when making decisions on funding Team NZ.

The Government pitched in only $5 million to help it hold together after the last America’s Cup in 2013.

National had criticised Labour for promising in 2007 to put $36m into Team NZ. By the time that had to be handed over, National was in power. It went ahead with the funding but was a very reluctant benefactor, interspersing the dollops of cash with moaning because it could not break the commercial agreement.

On the night Australia won the Auld Mug, Australia’s PM Bob Hawke wore an atrocious jacket with “Australia” emblazoned all over it, watched the race where the people and the cameras were at the Perth Yacht club and almost declared a public holiday on live TV.

All we got from English was a dorky video on social media of him in his trackydaks at home cheering by the television as the team went over the line. In these days of live pause and rewind we can’t even be sure it was the first take.

Having effectively traded off the rights to bask in reflected glory by declining to fund the campaign, English had clearly decided he had little choice but to resist crowing about the win lest he look like a hypocrite. Big mistake.

Political leaders around the world would kill to win a major sporting event in the months before a general election, for the feel-good factor it instils in the populace. When the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup in 2011, Key glowed like a nuclear reactor.

Key was shameless when it came to inveigling himself into successes he had nothing to do with. He all but had his own locker in the All Blacks’ changing rooms.

As English sat in his beanbag at home, there was Labour’s Trevor Mallard (the former sports minister behind the $36m to Team NZ in 2007) in sunny Bermuda, holding the cup aloft having proved inconclusively it was Finance Minister Steven Joyce who had jinxed the San Francisco campaign — not he.

Asked about future funding, English pointed to “fluctuating” levels of interest in New Zealand about Team NZ and the America’s Cup.

That referred to the tendency of people to object to taxpayer funding of such a sport — until and unless Team NZ wins. At that point, if the Government did not fund it, it gets pilloried for failing to do so.

The other unspoken criteria may well be whether it is an election year. If it is 2021, as expected, it will not be an election year. There is little return for investment in an event two years before an election.

It was left to Act Leader David Seymour to provide the comic relief.

Speaking of Team New Zealand’s win he revealed the real cause of Team New Zealand’s disastrous 2013 campaign. He recalled the “bitter, bitter, bitter disappointment that we suffered in 2013, when Steven Joyce went out on the water and it led to us losing time after time with enormous frustration”.

For it turned out that the Government had given something more valuable than money to the America’s Cup campaign — it made sure Jinxy Joyce steered clear of Bermuda.

Perhaps some of the funding that now seems likely to flow Team NZ’s way should be ring-fenced to pay to ship Joyce overseas when the next America’s Cup is held in New Zealand.