Opinion - Mike Williams: Must be time for a post Jami-Lee Ross National Party clean-out

Mike Williams

As the result of last week's Jami-Lee Ross vs Simon Bridges mayhem in the National Party, I found myself on the TVNZ politics programme, Q+A, broadcast live on Sunday night.

The word "surreal" is much overused these days, but it's hard to avoid it when describing this encounter to those who didn't see this programme.

The programme, solidly anchored by Corin Dann, relied heavily on a panel consisting of myself; Michelle Boag, briefly National Party president earlier this century; Wayne Mapp, a one-time Labour Party candidate who morphed into a National Party cabinet minister in the John Key government; and Bryce Edwards, a politics academic from Victoria University.

I felt somewhat outnumbered and quickly worked out that Wayne Mapp and Michelle Boag had been programmed with lines that, first, argued that Simon Bridges hadn't put a foot wrong and would be seen as "prime ministerial" in his handling of the events of the previous week and second, that the kind of gutter behaviour revealed in the various National Party leaks was normal in a political environment and "everybody did this".

Having spent many years involved in politics often at a high level, I quite simply never had to deal with (or even witness) the kind of low-rent behaviour revealed by the Ross debacle. I think the worst label I ever heard Helen Clark attach to one of her MPs was "prone to inertia".

The emerging facts tell us this eruption could and should have been avoided.

The fact Jami-Lee Ross was well and truly off the rails was brought to the attention of National Party president Peter Goodfellow 18 months before last week's explosion.

By all accounts, Goodfellow concocted a "gentleman's agreement" between Ross and a female local politician who had complained about Ross's threatening behaviour. All parties signed gag orders and the matter was not revealed to the parliamentary National Party leadership.

If that's not a definition of sweeping a scandal under the carpet, I don't know what is.

And it was a lost opportunity.

Ross was subsequently reselected as the National Party candidate for the safe Botany electorate and, with Simon Bridges as leader, promoted to the National Party's front bench.

Though Goodfellow seems to see nothing wrong with his actions, most would agree with former National MP Tau Henare, who said Goodfellow's head should be "rolling down Willis St". A senior political journalist I met in Wellington this week described him as "asleep at the wheel".

The TV1 poll published on Tuesday made a nonsense of Mapp and Boag's contention that the whole affair showed Simon Bridges in a positive "prime ministerial" light.

When the respondents were asked if their opinion of Bridges had changed because of last week's revelations, only 2 per cent agreed with Boag and Mapp and a third felt less positive about him.

This reaction was reflected in Simon Bridges' already low preferred ratings dropping to a level described by the excellent political journalist Jessica Mutch-McKay as "dangerously low" and "unsustainable".

Party votes measured in that poll had Labour gaining three points to 45% and National dropping two to 43%.

This result gave hope to National Party boosters that no lasting damage had occurred, but three factors should be considered before the champagne corks pop in Remuera.

First, National's score was the average of a week's nightly polling and close to half of the poll was taken before the detonation, so it's conceivable National finished the week in the 30s.

Second, Simon Bridges' low rating in the prime minister stakes is subject to the same mathematical dynamics as the party vote poll, so it's likely his support by the end of the week was even more abysmal than what was finally reported.

Third, National still has no hint of a possible coalition partner, while both of Labour's friends, the Green Party and New Zealand First, were above the 5% threshold needed for seats in Parliament.

Where were the wise heads you'd expect to find in a what used to be a decent political party?

Some actions of senior National MPs beggared belief.

Not even Bridges would bother defending his deputy, Paula Bennett, who dragged Jami-Lee Ross's marriage into an already over-flowing political sewer.

Her statement "What was put to him was inappropriate behaviour that is unacceptable from a married Member of Parliament" broke new grounds of insensitivity and just plain stupid nastiness.

This line was delivered knowing that the object of Bennett's derision was in the grip of a mental health crisis and it put the spotlight on Ross's affair with a female National MP whose deranged text message is now getting relayed all over Wellington.

Clean-out time in the National Party won't be next week, but it can't be too far off.

* Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.