The smugness of the National Party at present is positively nauseating. Three months of encouraging poll results and they are already arguing about the colour of the new drapes for Premier House. (Most, naturally, favour royal blue; some a light green; and there's even a staunch minority still holding out for a rich, ethnic brown.)
This overweening confidence is fed by the unceasing drumbeat of anti-government stories, negative cartoons, and wildly-hyped poll data hurled at them almost daily by elements within the news media. "One Party State!" - screamed a recent headline (although it was difficult to tell whether this was supposed to be a prediction, a description or a suggestion). The business community, prone to believing just about everything it reads in the newspapers - even its own propaganda - is now furiously advising itself on how best to "manage the interface" between business and government under the new regime.
All the usual suspects from the 1980s and 90s - along with a crop of up-and-coming acolytes from the country's leading businesses -gathered on Waiheke Island last week to discuss this "interface" at the Business Roundtable's annual "Dunes Symposium". The two Rogers (Douglas and Kerr) were present to deliver their thoughts on "Business Leadership in Public Policy" - an interesting choice of subject for a former politician and a one-time civil servant. As one of the prime movers of the 1980s reforms was later heard to mutter: if New Zealanders had waited for business to take the lead on public policy reform "we'd still be waiting to start".
Rod Deane - once affectionately known as "Dr Death" - was also in good form, discoursing upon "The State of the Nation". (Not good.) The star-turn of the symposium, however, was undoubtedly the new kid on the right-wing block - John Key. (Although his allocated speaking time of 45 minutes on "National's Economic Vision" did strike me as a trifle generous.) Not to worry. The National Party leader was received by these awestruck minions of Mammon with such reverence that the journalists present could have been forgiven for thinking he had actually walked to Waiheke Island. But, not everyone is ready to hail Key as New Zealand's messiah.
More than a few (including the Labour blogger, Jordan Carter, to whom I am indebted for the following quotations) have noted the leader of the opposition's startling revisions of his own - and his party's - stance on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Responding to visiting left-wing British MP George Galloway's charge that a National government would be more likely to lead New Zealand into a conflict in the Middle East - Mr Key declared: "(We've) made it quite clear we won't be going to Iraq, we wouldn't have sent troops to Iraq. National did support the Coalition of the Willing's right to send troops, but that's because we are of the view that every country is entitled to take its own actions, but we certainly won't be going."
On March 11, 2003, however, the Rodney Times reported that: "New Zealand should support its allies first and the United Nations second, says National MP John Key. `Any relationship with the United States or Britain has to take precedence over the United Nations.'... He would be prepared to commit any support requested by the United States for a war against Iraq, including SAS and combat troops. `New Zealand should be prepared to fight for the values it believes in."'
At the Dunes Symposium dinner on Thursday night, the keynote speaker, Jonathan Ling, chief executive of Fletcher Building, emphasised the crucial importance of getting the big leadership decisions right. But the statements quoted above expose Key as a leader who made the wrong call on one of the biggest decisions any prime minister is ever likely to make: whether to commit our nation's troops to an illegal war of aggression. Even worse, he is now unwilling to acknowledge his error.
Applauded by New Zealand's business leaders and cheered to the echo by the National Party faithful Key may be - but he still has a long way to go before he's ready for the responsibilities of Premier House. National's redecorators should hold off buying those drapes for a while yet.
