Metiria Turei plays a risky hand
Everybody lies? Seems so. You don’t need a scientific survey to know that trust in politicians telling the truth is at an all-time low.
Yet the Green Party MPs have always held themselves apart from all that.
They act like they have a natural advantage in a place where the rest of the participants struggle to sell us on their honesty and integrity.
Maybe that’s why Metiria Turei’s admission that she lied to maximise her income from the DPB is so jarring.
‘‘I was one of those women who you hear people complain about on talkback radio,’’ she confessed.
Turei might as well have added: ‘‘Talkback was right.’’
Because Turei admits that while she was on the DPB, she failed to tell Winz about some extra flatmates. It meant she got more than she was entitled to.
In the scheme of things, the ‘‘crime’’ is not huge. Turei claims she did it to feed her child. But that hasn’t made it any the less polarising.
On the one side, there is anger – for every Turei, there are countless more women who managed to feed their children with less.
But on the political left, there is near euphoria.
After months in a state of torpor, Turei has galvanised the party’s base. The #Iammetiria hashtag is sweeping Twitter. Left-wing commentator Chris Trotter has even likened the lie to storming the Bastille.
It’s hard to imagine the same rapture greeting the darling of the American left, Bernie Sanders, admitting to something equally shocking, like cheating on his taxes.
Sanders’ halo is bigger than Texas. That was – is – his appeal. There would probably be open-mouthed silence.
To be fair, the grassroots of the Green Party have an innate distrust of the system.
So Turei’s confession might be viewed as the politics of ‘‘sticking it to the establishment’’ - even if it doesn’t do other DPB mums any favours, given that it plays up to the stereotypes on talkback.
But at its most basic, Turei’s admission is also an acknowledgement that she’s no better than the rest of them.
She could have used her maiden speech to deliver a powerful message about poverty by revealing her ‘‘crime’’ 15 years ago, but didn’t. She could have used it to fill in the gaps on her ‘‘back story’’ when she was appointed leader, but didn’t.
In fact, she kept quiet about it a lot longer than Bill English stayed shtum over the affairs of his backbench MP Todd Barclay.
So Turei has already failed the most basic political test: the hypocrisy one.
But that was always going to be the risk. So why now?
In a word, politics. The Greens are desperate for a circuit breaker and a way to tap into the zeitgeist of the United States and British elections.
The Greens have entered every election with high hopes of mobilising the youth vote. But they have never spoken to them in the way that Sanders did in the US or Jeremy Corbyn did in Britain.
The Greens tried to reach them by ditching the so-called radicalism of the Sue Bradford years, but the new look Greens, with their glossy magazine covers, glamorous new candidates and fiscal responsibility rules have jarred with the base.
The so-called youth quake in Britain, chasing Corbyn’s lurch to the left, is a signpost to the promised land.
Turei’s speech is an attempt to put a stake in the same ground. But there will be collateral damage. It’s usually said that nobody ever lost votes by beating up on Australians or beneficiaries. Turei’s speech will be a big turn-off to Labour’s target voter, the mythical ‘‘white van man’’ – the bluecollar tradie who’s just getting by.
Those voters were never going to vote for the Greens anyway. But it might drive them from Labour to NZ First.
The damage might be even closer to home for the Greens. A growing number of voters – the much-derided urban liberal included – are concerned by the sight of children living in cars or substandard boarding houses.
They worry that some of the more punitive sanctions – like cutting benefits for women who won’t or can’t name their child’s father – only takes food out of the mouths of children.
Turei’s speech might have appealed to those voters on one level, but her DPB bludging confession is a huge turn-off to many of them.
It’s also an in-your-face reminder that the Green Party and the hugely powerful Green ‘‘brand’’ are two very different things.
Facebook feeds suggest that’s the conclusion many have already reached.
And in an election that is shaping up as a fight over the haves and have nots, it probably tips the scales on addressing inequality farther than many of them would be comfortable with.
TRACY WATKINS