KEY POINTS:
Before barging through the door marked "enter", the canny politician first checks there is a door marked "exit" on the other side.
Howard Broad is not a politician. But the Commissioner of Police was fully cognisant of the Pandora's box he was opening by approving the nationwide swoop on political activists alleged to have attended military-style training camps in the Ureweras.
At his midday press conference on Monday, Broad replied to the torrent of questions on that morning's operation by picking his words carefully and sparingly when pressed for detail on those arrested, their supposed motives and the exact nature of the threat they posed to public safety.
But he volunteered a couple of important statements which have since got lost in the unfolding drama. First, he acknowledged that the "enforcement action" would spark intense and widespread public debate.
That would seem to be a statement of the obvious. But it shows Broad was acutely aware that in raising the possibility of prosecutions under the five-year-old Terrorism Suppression Act, he had well and truly let the genie out of the bottle.
He then appeared to try to stuff it back in by cautioning against jumping to conclusions about "the extent of the involvement" of that act when police come to make final decisions on prosecutions. But that statement was more of an insurance policy.
It is conceivable that those arrested this week ultimately face lesser charges under the Firearms Act or Crimes Act and no one ends up appearing in court on terrorism offences. For starters, the latter would require the consent of the Solicitor-General, David Collins, to proceed.
The Terrorism Suppression Act contains significantly tougher sentences than those in other acts dealing with similar crimes.
The onus would be on the Crown to prove there was a credible terrorist threat and clear intent on the part of those charged to commit terrorist offences.
Any convictions would inevitably be subject to lengthy appeals, given the law has not previously been tested by the courts.
The overwhelming experience from anti-terrorism laws in overseas jurisdictions is that relatively few cases make it to the courts compared with numbers initially arrested - and of those that do reach court, even fewer result in convictions.
If no prosecutions are taken under the Terrorism Suppression Act, Broad can say he had emphasised from the outset that might be the case. He has given himself an out.
Whether that would get him off the political hook is another matter. Ironically, long-standing opponents of New Zealand's anti-terrorism laws would be happy. However, Broad would find himself on the receiving end of one almighty backlash.
This week's raids were an anti-terrorist operation in all but name. If the police are found to have over-reacted, there will be a queue of politicians from the Prime Minister down after the commissioner's scalp.
After the dreadful year the police have had with public relations - the ongoing Clint Rickards case, the Bazley inquiry and the "body in the boot" embarrassment - another debacle is out of the question.
Broad's reputation is on the line. But it seems improbable he would have gone out on such a limb and mentioned the Terrorism Suppression Act if there was serious doubt about whether it will be invoked.
Notably, the search warrants covering the raids refer to at least one offence under the Terrorism Suppression Act - participating in a terrorist group. That inclusion is required in a warrant if evidence seized in the raids is to be used in prosecutions under that act.
The sheer assertiveness of the police operation combined with a "trust us" demeanour indicate they are sure that once the facts are in the public domain, they are not going to lose the confidence of politicians and the wider public, even if there is mounting criticism of the way the operation has been conducted in the interim.
That leaves everyone else waiting to cast judgment. The result is a political vacuum, one which Michael Cullen, as Acting Prime Minister, urged MPs of all persuasions not to fill by rushing to judgment before the police had made their case publicly.
But politics abhors a vacuum.
This one was filled by the Maori Party, which became more scathing as the week went on, culminating in co-leader Pita Sharples describing the raids as "storm-trooper tactics" which had set back race relations for 100 years.
This sort of language upped the pressure on Maori MPs in the Labour caucus to also take a public stand. But doing so would have cut across the line being taken by the Government as a whole.
Ministers have stressed the independence of police operations at every opportunity in what looks like a calculated attempt to put a bit of breathing space between Labour and the police without looking casual about any threat to public safety.
Labour's careful effort to avoid upsetting either of its Maori or Pakeha constituencies was briefly thrown into disarray after Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia ignored Cullen's stricture about making judgments and told TV3 he did not believe Tame Iti was a terrorist.
That required some swift damage control on Horomia's part. But with the Greens getting increasingly angry with the police, the question is whether some politicians' growing impatience prompts any meaningful debate about New Zealand's anti-terrorism laws. It seems unlikely.
The Terrorism Suppression Act was passed in the post-September 11 environment to bring New Zealand law into line with United Nations practices for designating terrorist entities. Its provisions were designed principally to respond to external threats, rather than domestically sourced terrorism.
Debate surrounding the measure was muted by three factors: the absence of any obvious domestic threat, the absence of civil liberties-threatening provisions on the detention of suspects, and the Labour-National consensus on the need for such legislation.
These factors explain why there has been relatively little fuss about the amending bill before Parliament which tightens up the Terrorist Suppression Act.
Suggestions that this week's operation was being used as justification for getting the bill passed into law are way off beam.
The measure did not need such assistance. If anything, the police raids will delay the bill's passage because the Government will not wish to inflame things by putting it up for debate in the House.
Any rewriting of anti-terrorist law now more likely hinges on what unforeseen legal obstacles the police face in trying to take prosecutions under the Terrorism Suppression Act and subsequently how the courts interpret that law.
But you can safely bet that any amendments will be to tighten up the law - not weaken it.
And you can bet it will all be done under the hoary old slogan of "striking a proper balance between civil liberties and public safety".
