Fran O'Sullivan: After six years, it's time for a change

Helen Clark and Don Brash have polarised New Zealand in their bitter fight over who gets to be Prime Minister after Saturday's election.

Not since the 1981 election has this country been divided into two such opposing camps. Back then families were rent asunder in a classic conservative-liberal split after a National Prime Minister allowed the apartheid-selected Springboks rugby team to tour here during the run-up to the election.

This time round, major vote-buying by Labour and National has also bifurcated the electorate. The election has been transformed into the sort of two-party race that has not been seen since the First Past the Post "winner takes all" electoral system was abolished in favour of proportional representation.

Partially this is the result of the contrasting personalities of the two major prime ministerial candidates.

Clark - with the benefit of incumbency - has run an adroit campaign, skilfully using her control of the Government's agenda to force her opponent onto the back foot by orchestrating "events" to overshadow Brash's major policy announcements.

She has driven a wedge into middle New Zealand with Labour's expansion of the Working for Families programme and its plan to wipe interest from student loans, and a refusal to give single people or families without dependent children a slice of the growth dividend from the past six years.

Clark and her attack dog - Cabinet Minister Trevor Mallard - have cast the United States as the "bogeyman" which is pulling Brash's strings on foreign policy issues, and have whipped up a storm (without any direct evidence) against the National leader, claiming he "can't be trusted" because of his initial confusion over the authorship of Exclusive Brethren pamphlets attacking Labour's potential coalition partner, the Green Party.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen - the other member of the Clark-Cullen power duo - began the campaign on the back foot because of expectations that he would unveil tax cuts in his sixth Budget.

Forced to preside over policy pledges that run counter to his own desire to bank the "profits" from a relative boom in corporate earnings to meet future demographic challenges, Cullen has nevertheless impressed with his command of policy detail and the numbers.

Brash - the novice campaigner - has propelled himself forward almost in spite of himself. More often than not, he has been forced onto the back foot as Clark swiped him sideways with her acute use of political timing. His obvious lack of command of all the details of the more minor National policies counts against him.

But Brash has also been able to forge a clear identity for National. The promotion of a major tax cuts programme and a refocus on national identity have achieved political cut-through. National has proved responsive to business concerns with its proposals to move quickly to ensure New Zealand has adequate infrastructure to underpin sustained economic growth.

He tripped himself up with his initial pedantic response to the Greens' claims that National was behind the Exclusive Brethren's leaflet campaign, and his foolish use of the words "I am not a liar".

The stolen emails from his computer, which painted him as a prisoner of the Business Roundtable, were disturbing. But more because it is still not clear who is the source of these obviously confidential communications rather than any suggestion that they provide evidence of a big business conspiracy.

Brash's flip-flops on some policies close to the Roundtable's heart tend to point to more malign forces at work, which may be disclosed once a police investigation is completed.

His designated Finance Minister, John Key, is clearly the corporate sector's darling. Key presents a generational and ideological challenge to Cullen.

The former money market man has sold the virtues of tax cuts to the many New Zealanders who feel disenfranchised by Labour's own vote-buying efforts.

But some issues about this campaign disturb me.

THERE has been precious little focus from a business perspective on just what influence the Greens would have in a coalition Government with Labour - which is, after all, still the only clear combination on offer.

Ironically, the Exclusive Brethren's pamphlets, labelled "smears" by some, are worth examining from the perspective of showing just how adept the Greens have been at shifting the focus away from scrutiny of their own policies.

The Greens say that, of 15 claims by the Exclusive Brethren, seven are outright lies, seven half-truths and only one is a true statement.

But I find it difficult to reconcile the Greens' response (this is "an outright lie") to a Brethren claim that they would introduce capital gains tax on family homes.

What the Greens do say is: "We believe New Zealand should investigate whether introducing a capital gains tax exempting the family home would be good for our country. It could help reduce interest rates and house prices, as well as allowing cuts to personal and company tax. A capital gains tax exempting the family home already exists in Australia."

More of a half-truth I suspect.

Likewise, the Brethren's earlier "Wake Up" campaign against New Zealand's foreign policy. But again, this hardly falls into the smear category, or the same level of Labour-inspired dirty tricks which saw US billionaire Julian Robertson slagged as the offshore bagman pulling Brash's strings.

Or the burglarising of the contents of Brash's personal computer accompanied by the carefully stage-managed releases of its contents to selected journalists.

Labour's decision to send false "eviction notices" to 70,000 state house tenants, which clearly upset elderly and intellectually disabled tenants, might also be investigated.

Likewise, trade union funding of the Labour Party - particularly the strong partisan position taken by the EPMU, to which the journalists union is affiliated.

These issues will no doubt provide plenty of fuel for the final leaders' debate on TV3 this week.

But they are secondary to the clear policy choice on offer.

The real issue facing voters is whether to go with the status quo - effectively endorsing three more years of economic redistribution. Or vote for a change to policies which incentivise on the basis of individual endeavours.

It is a classic left or right choice.

Now for the rider. Whether it is Clark or Brash who romps home on Saturday, they will be faced with some urgent fence mending.

If Brash is to make a successful Prime Minister he will need to get over himself in his dealings with women (his remarks about Clark on an earlier television debate were patronising). And his attitude to Maori, who demographically will be a major racial segment by the mid-2000s, is plainly very "last century."

Brash would be advised to focus first on the economic challenges facing New Zealand and take a gentler approach to issues around national identity. A Royal Commission perhaps.

If Clark is awarded a rare third term as a Labour Prime Minister, she will be tested with a healing job of her own, particularly with the business sector, and with those New Zealanders who Labour passed over in its vote-buying splurge.

My view is that - despite opinion polls now putting Labour and National neck and neck - New Zealand is ripe for a change of government.

To its credit, Labour has presided over six years of economic growth and has helped to heal past divisions. But it has not presented a compelling election strategy - which outweighs the propensity to third-term drift - to justify a further term in office.

It is notoriously hard to "change the wheels on the 747" once it leaves the ground.

Clark has not regenerated her Government by fostering new talent at either Cabinet or party level. Her political capital is eroding and she will not be able to rely on a post-election "honeymoon" in which to ward off obvious coalition pressures as the economy contracts.

It's time for fresh blood at the top.