Jane Clifton
The Botany by-election is a long way off for the embattled Opposition.
Were a different coalition decision made a year ago, Simon Bridges and Jami-Lee Ross would be two happy, blokey peas in a National Cabinet pod: bestriding the country opening new motorways and creches, meeting Meghan and Harry, making stonking speeches about business and growth and rocking the hard hat and hi-vis.
Instead, these two formerly good mates are in the process of blowing up each other’s careers. If nothing else, it’s the most decisive method this writer has ever seen of making life in Opposition relevant. The country is transfixed – the bombshells and cliffhangers probably too extreme even for Netflix.
Ross, who might more accurately style himself Jami-Lee Wrath, has quite suddenly decided the leader he campaigned for is corrupt and tyrannical, and has reported him to the police over his stewardship of a secret party donation from a wealthy Chinese businessman.
This may be more personal fugue than fact-based, as Ross has admitted to a recent nervous collapse and may not be a reliable judge of the material he’s wielding. What he’s released so far is inconclusive, though Bridges does come across as arrogant, calculating and callous about donors and colleagues, which may be more damaging than any financial misstep.
But the net effect is as bad either way. Bridges, though he may be as innocent as the postcard spring lamb sniffing a daffodil, could be mortally wounded. His handling of Ross’ detonation has been tellingly maladroit, and, as ever, with the combo of politics, big business and money, it’s not so much what happened but how it can be made to look.
Once again, we have to wheel out the trusty old Helen Clark Swirl-oMeter. With the donation under police investigation, which could take months, and the National Party unable or, perhaps, unwilling to produce paperwork to elucidate it meantime, allegations will be in full and indefinite swirl. The damage of all this uncertainty and speculation could force Bridges to stand aside “for the good of the party”.
He was already in the gun for his grandiose and thin-skinned reaction to a petty leak of his travel expenses, and to Ross’ then-mysterious indefinite medical leave from Parliament, which he repeatedly called “embarrassing!”
If he is found to have been so much as a bit cocky about how to account for that donation, or about big donors getting preference as candidates, he’ll be on toast – even before
We have a rogue MP bent on revenge, even though the main casualty will almost certainly be himself.
Judith Collins can enjoy buttering it.
Though Bridges was the sole intended target, the shrapnel from Ross’ surprise grenade has lodged all over the political firmament. Most parties are offered big donations, including from Asian moneybags. Expert China-watchers say it’s possible some of that dosh comes from the Chinese Government or Communist Party – whatever difference that makes, if any, being a whole other story. But this is not one of those hi-vis photo opportunities, even if the money comes from the corner dairy.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY
Save for the Greens, our MPs are as dark as they can be about their donors, most money coming from unnamed sources. Under our law, not all donors need legally be disclosed, and there are known ways of bending the rules so as to avoid the disclosure threshold.
If National is guilty of this to an unlawful degree as Ross alleges, it’s possible others are, too. The letter of the law has seldom been tested, so who knows what discreet but undesirable practices have grown up?
However, that’s a bun fight for later. For now, we have a rogue MP bent on revenge, even though the main casualty will almost certainly be himself. And we have a leader who stepped on a trusted lieutenant and triggered a landmine.
What seems unbecomingly clear is that the grapes of Ross are sour. His grievance didn’t start with the donation. He was a fully paid-up member of Bridges’ kitchen cabinet until he didn’t get everything he wanted in the last shadow cabinet reshuffle.
Bridges decided that a series of jobs Ross wanted, and felt he’d been promised in exchange for his loyalty, needed to go to other caucus seniors.
This is bog-standard political horse-trading, yet Ross seems to have taken it as the greatest betrayal since the Vichy government. In the manner of a child miffed to get only one computer toy from Santa, Ross told the media he was only rewarded with a promotion to the front bench.
As Prime Minister emeritus Helen Clark once said: diddums.
From this minor series of disappointments developed a rapid and violent disaffection, of which Ross’ righteousness about the donation seems to have been a post-facto part. Ross began to find fault with Bridges’ leadership style and decisions, and his
National’s heroically high standing in the polls – probably unprecedented for a first-term Opposition – will surely take a hit.
poor personal poll rating. In retaliation, Bridges and remaining lieutenants accused Ross of ill-treating women and other transgressions still unaired, and sent him on enforced medical leave.
SERIOUS LEAKAGE
Who knows what other recriminations have been roiling behind those closed Opposition doors, but to indicate the byzantine flavour, Ross has denied being the leaker of Bridges’ travel expenses, but confessed to re-leaking the leak of a text from the original purported leaker, who also pleaded a mental-health outage.
In the final wash-up, few of these details now matter much. Some quite petty issues, and some others of potential severity, have been allowed to tsunami to a degree where both men are painfully exposed. Worse, National’s heroically high standing in the polls – probably unprecedented for a firstterm Opposition – will surely take a hit.
The Government, suffering permanently smarting toes in its awkward three-way coalition barn dance, cannot believe its luck. Its cock-ups simply cannot compete. Trade Minister David Parker blithely shrugged off awkward questions about the causes of petrol price rises in Parliament on Tuesday, saying, “I suspect I could say ‘rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb’ today and it wouldn’t be reported.”
There’s no way for National to avert a drawnout bloodletting even if it can convincingly clear up doubts around the handling of the donation in short order. Arguably, it’s already too late. Party president Peter Goodfellow should have been able to refute Ross’ allegations in detail the day he made them but didn’t, or couldn’t. Even a day under a “dodgy donation” cloud is too long for an already struggling leader. The cloud over Bridges’ judgment and people skills may never shift. He rightly faces criticism both for his disregarding the potential severity of the travel budget leaker’s mental-health wobbles – confirmed by the police as real – and for his insensitive characterising of Ross’ acknowledged mental-health issues.
BAD TIMES IN BOTANY
Framing it all up daily, from here to Christmas, will be a by-election in picturesque Botany, where Ross will seek re-election as an independent and battling martyr.
The Battle of Botany brings to mind AA Milne’s poem about Bad Sir Brian Botany, who went about monstering villagers and boasting about it, until they chucked him into a pond in the penultimate verse. This is how National will continue to portray Ross: a bully who has ill-treated one too many people. It’s not easy to decode the accusations colleagues have made against him, and deputy leader Paula Bennett muddied the waters further with her “inappropriate conduct for a married man” comment. But Ross does, by many accounts, have a rather lowering presence and a manner that can, perhaps without his even realising it, be intimidating.
One source says he behaves as though he were in an espionage novel, seeming convinced every piece of parliamentary business, however banal, needs to be conducted in a state of high suspicion, and that only his iron secrecy, discipline and enforcement stand in the way of some dastardly red infiltrator.
It doesn’t help his case that he’s largely unknown outside Botany, with no obvious political achievements other than his now-trashed status within the caucus.
Ross is nevertheless a talented, ministerial-grade politician, who over seven years as MP will have helped and endeared himself to many constituents. However, the even candidate-to-party-vote ratio pattern does not suggest Botany has a Ross dependency, but rather a solid allegiance to National. It’s nigh impossible for him to win the seat.
But he’ll have a platform from now until nearly Christmas for portraying Bridges as the big bad bully, and the temptation to dredge up others’ peccadillos from his time as whip, a job, which made him official caucus confidante. “I am Sir Brian/As bold as a lion/Take that, and that, and that!”
Both sides need to mind the mutually assured destruction quotient in peccadillo-dredging and character assassination. Voters could rightly ask National, if Ross has been such a bad egg for so long, why did you even reselect him, let alone promote him to the front bench?
Similarly, if Ross seeks further to portray his caucus as a snivelling bunch of Bridges-cowed stooges, why has it taken him so long to notice, let alone to leave? And what of his judgment that he only now discerns Bridges to be such a dastardly character?
A SECOND LEAKER?
Two further disturbing outstanding issues will continue to trouble the body politic. One is that burner phones, the staple of many a crime-fiction plot, are compulsorily traceable by the police – and instantaneously so if there’s any threat to life or public safety suspected. This will have come as a revelation to many politicos, including would-be malicious leakers and noble whistleblowers alike. It’s harder and harder to stay anonymous while leaking via computer, and now it seems the only way to forestall the official knock at the door after a text leak is to steal someone else’s burner phone and fake a SIM card ID. Skulduggery or anonymous do-goodery shouldn’t be this hard.
Perversely, the other worrying un-darned thread is the identity of the original leaker. The considerable forensic forces and billable sevenminute blocks of accounting and legal heavyweights could not, after several weeks, say it was Ross, other than on the balance of probability.
Ross says with great conviction that it wasn’t him. By now it wouldn’t matter much if he admitted to it. Given the schtuck he’s in overall – not least the possibility he, too, will be found culpable if there’s been any naughtiness with the donation – one would have thought this would be the time to ask the judge to take into account other previous offences.
His adamant demeanour leaves open the possibility that there’s a second viper still nestled against Bridges’ bosom.
If so, he or she will presumably rage and slather in the shadows like the Beast of Bodmin, ready to leak and leak again. Or even to re-leak leaked leaks.
If so, now would be a good time to get it all over with. If anyone in National wants to get back into government within the next decade, creating too long a period of distraction from the Government’s bungles is not a winning strategy.
Ross will have a platform from now until nearly Christmas for portraying Bridges as the big bad bully.