John Armstrong: To the victim go the spoils

Don't tell the Prime Minister, but only one person emerges as a possible winner from this week's mind-boggling barrage of claim and counter-claim surrounding the Security Intelligence Service.

That person will be on a West Auckland marae this weekend, her cherubic smile beaming beatifically at delegates at the Maori Party's annual meeting.

Tariana Turia is the potential winner because she has much to gain from this strange affair and nothing to lose, unlike the other players drawn into this homespun version of a Frederick Forsyth thriller.

She sought an inquiry. She got one.

The findings may pooh-pooh the Sunday Star-Times' allegations that the SIS has illegally infiltrated Maori organisations and bugged Maori politicians.

No matter. In an atmosphere of burgeoning paranoia, Turia has already capitalised on the allegations as further proof of Maori being targeted by the Establishment.

She has shrewdly played to her audience in another example of what John Pagani, a former adviser to Jim Anderton, has called "the politics of victimhood".

Someone else - the Prime Minister, the head of the SIS, or the editor of the Sunday Star-Times - stands to be the big loser once Justice Paul Neazor, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, has shone sunlight into the inner workings of the SIS.

For the SIS was either engaged in monkey-business or it wasn't. Someone is right. And someone is wrong. Big reputations and an awful lot of credibility are at stake.

If Neazor's inquiry turns up even a hint of some low-level SIS operative doing something shonky, then the service's director, Richard Woods, having assured the Prime Minister the allegations are a "work of fiction", will be outski by lunchtime.

Having taken Woods on his word, Helen Clark, the minister responsible for the SIS, will be mercilessly flayed by Opposition parties, who are sensibly withholding judgment simply because it is impossible to ascertain exactly what has been going on.

Some things must be assumed, however.

The first is that Woods, a former diplomat not prone to making extravagant disclaimers unless he is sure of himself, has turned his organisation upside down in the couple of weeks since the allegations first surfaced on the Scoop news website.

Having presumably found nothing amiss, he has given the Prime Minister the kind of assurance that you don't give to someone like Clark unless you are 100 per cent sure it is watertight.

That has given Clark the confidence to stare down the Sunday Star-Times and accede to pressure for a wider inquiry into the whole melange of allegations - rather than one restricted to investigating Turia's formal complaint to Neazor that the SIS has been spying on the Maori Party.

It will be supreme irony and highly fortuitous for Clark if, in laying that complaint and Neazor agreeing to investigate it, Turia has accidentally helped the Prime Minister to shut down the whole affair.

Having rubbished the reports in last weekend's Sunday Star-Times, Clark could hardly then turn around and immediately establish an inquiry herself.

But Turia's subsequent complaint - laid after she claimed her former ministerial home had been bugged and despite a categorical denial from Woods that the SIS was responsible - triggered a legal process that has culminated in such an inquiry with wide judicial powers.

Under the eight-year-old law outlining the watchdog role of the Inspector-General, Neazor had to obtain the Prime Minister's permission to investigate a case where "the propriety of particular activities" of the SIS are under question.

Clark had little option but to grant his request. Not to do so would have seen Turia using her party's annual meeting to accuse Clark of a cover-up and to castigate Labour's Maori MPs for doing nothing.

It naturally followed that Clark would allow Neazor to widen his inquiry to the Sunday Star-Times allegations because they cover the same territory as Turia's complaint.

It was also vital to flag an inquiry before the newspaper printed fresh allegations this weekend. Failure to do so would have put the Government even more on the defensive.

Now, instead of Clark having to issue limp, trust-me rebuttals, she can simply refer new allegations to Neazor's inquiry.

The inquiry enables her to stand to one side, putting some distance between her and the SIS in the process.

Furthermore, Clark has thrown down the gauntlet to the Sunday newspaper by challenging it to take part in the inquiry, knowing full well the paper is most reluctant to reveal its sources - three supposed former SIS agents.

If that means the inquiry goes nowhere, then so be it. Clark cannot be blamed.

No doubt Clark is delighted that one of those sources has likely been revealed as a mysterious and discredited expatriate who has never been an SIS agent.

That has further muddied the murk and undermined the credibility of the newspaper's allegations - and allegations it has yet to make.

But although Clark may yet be able to take satisfaction in knee-capping a media organisation - along with Nicky Hager, her "Corngate" tormentor - corroboration that the SIS is operating within the law does not amount to a win for the Prime Minister.

It is the status quo. There is no obvious upside for the Government as there was with the unmasking and expulsion of the Israeli spies.

Instead, the allegations have given oxygen to the Maori Party, providing Turia with a fresh grievance to unite her disparate membership just as the Government had laid to rest her other cause celebre, the foreshore and seabed.

Overshadowed by this week's fuss was a Marae-DigiPoll survey showing widespread vote-splitting in the Maori seats, to the advantage of Turia's party.

The poll has defied Labour strategists' expectations that support for the Maori Party would be melting by now. To the contrary, four of Labour's six Maori MPs could lose their seats.

Two weeks ago, those MPs received a standing ovation at the Labour Party conference for their forbearance in compromising on the foreshore legislation.

A round of applause will not save their electoral necks. They need more concrete assistance.

Clark's willingness to countenance an inquiry into the SIS should be seen in that light.