Fran O'Sullivan: Empress is losing her clothes

Helen Clark's one-woman band style of Cabinet rule is over. Two weeks into an election campaign - called three months early to make the most of her stratospheric popularity and Labour's high poll ratings - the Prime Minister's own style of leadership is fast becoming a major issue.

For much of the past three years Clark's leadership has been impregnable.

Capitalising on her long political apprenticeship, frank mastery over many portfolios and deep knowledge of Parliament and its deep shark-infested waters, Clark has ruled over her Cabinet - and a drip-fed news media happy to allow the traditional honeymoon to continue long after separation should have been imposed.

But this election campaign, far from being a boring four-week affirmation of the Prime Minister's powers, has exposed some big chinks in her armour.

Despite publicity over Paintergate, when the powers that be backed away from pursuing criminal charges against her over paintings and doodles she falsely signed for charity auctions; and then Corngate, a clearly politically trumped-up ambush over allegations that genetically engineered sweetcorn was at large in New Zealand ("Hagergate" would be more appropriate), she retains sufficient respect and goodwill to put Labour in the box seat to form the next Government.

But her legitimacy is reduced - and she knows it. Corngate has knocked her self-image as no other crisis has. This was abundantly clear when she started referring to herself in the third person - "the Prime Minister ... " in her controversial television interview with TV3's John Campbell last week.

Unfortunately for Labour, when Clark's self-image is damaged, so is the party's.

That is the upshot of running a presidential election campaign based around Clark herself, rather than a campaign showcasing the strengths of Labour's top tier, which is demonstrably more competent than the brat-pack cronies and politically correct appointments with which National's Bill English has stacked his front bench.

This may be election time, but there is a long list of businesspeople and politicians who have been verbally drummed from high office by Clark who will delight in some schadenfreude right now at her expense.

In retrospect, the list of those brought low astounds: Rosanne Meo, former chairwoman of Television New Zealand, castigated over a TVNZ contract for former newsreader John Hawkesby; John Maasland, former Airways Corporation chairman, subject to false claims that he had stood to benefit personally from a British privatisation bid, earned himself a prime ministerial tongue-lashing even though a subsequent Audit Office inquiry cleared him; Dover Samuels, dropped as Maori Affairs Minister after unsubstantiated allegations of sex with a minor; former Alliance MP Phillida Bunkle, pushed from her "minister-outside Cabinet" post after a kerfuffle over her MP allowances; Ruth Dyson, stood down from Cabinet after a drink-driving charge; and Labour MP Marian Hobbs.

Then there have been the Cabinet gang-ups: the judge caught out accessing porno sites on his office computer; Susan Bathgate's double-dipping at the Employment Relations Authority; the personal attacks on state servants' so-called "gold-plate" payouts - which turned out to be merely redundancy entitlements - and the furore over Christine Rankin's expenditure at Work & Income New Zealand.

In all these cases, Clark has been on the offensive. No quarter has been given.

But it will not have escaped notice that the retribution meted out to others in difficulties has not been applied by the authorities in Paintergate, though a prima facie case of criminal fraud was established. The prospect that, if convicted, Clark could no longer serve as Prime Minister was thought to be an excessive punishment.

But many of those drummed from their high office - for offences which were not criminal - would question that judgment call.

Ethicists oft say, "If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated". In fact, the law is not a homogeneous steamroller; justice is frequently for those who can afford it.

All political scandals produce their own euphemisms and slogans. Watergate endures as the label for former US Republican President Richard Nixon's cover-up of the burglary of the Democrats' HQ at a Washington hotel.

Paintergate probably has sufficient "gate" quality to squeak across the scandal threshold, particularly given Clark's refusal to answer all the questions put by police, even if on her lawyer's advice, and the destruction of evidence by her staff.

Couple this with the Securities Commission's inquiry into insider issues relating to Air New Zealand, which found the PM had unwisely advised shareholders to "hold on to" their airline shares at a time when the Cabinet was discussing price-sensitive matters relating to a potential bailout, and a picture emerges that calls for her to modify her style.

With the fuss over GM corn - a Hager stunt from way back - Clark fell into a trap. Hager is a master "spinner", guilty of the same tactics he accuses the power elite of using.

In Campbell he had a willing dupe. The TV3 journalist is a fan of John Pilger, the journalist who has risked his own life to expose rotten regimes around the world.

But Campbell's set-up piece (TV parlance), where he went down to the farm to expose the GM corn outbreak, was fatuously overdone. There were no interviews with the companies concerned, nor with any relevant politicians.

He took the Hager line at face value and failed to apply sufficiently rigorous questioning to the greenie spinmeister before starting his inquisition of Clark.

If Hager had been so concerned about this GM sweetcorn outbreak, why didn't he take his worries to the relevant authorities, seek their responses and bring the matter to public attention before yet another growing season?

The answer is obvious. Hager's self-interest is in his own book sales.

He would rather put New Zealand's "clean, green image" at risk, and possibly damage New Zealand's agricultural exports to a raft of markets, by dropping such a damaging story in the heat of an election campaign, rather than investigate further to find out whether the allegations that GM sweetcorn is at large were true.

By the time the full extent of Hager's own malfeasance and duplicity has sunk in, the election will be over. The consequences will not. Labour will still be the biggest polling party on election day.

The chances of a coalition between Labour and the Greens are markedly lessened - look for NZ First's Winston Peters as a possible Maori Affairs Minister instead.

Clark will no longer have outright supremacy in all Cabinet arenas. In Labour's second term other ministers will be brought to the fore to front their own portfolio issues.

It's self-protection really - hers and theirs.

There comes a point where every Empress must lose her clothes.

Clark's not there yet - but the point is that much closer as a result of this campaign.

Dialogue on business

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