Editorial - Tuesday March 25, 2014

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

IT'S not difficult to lose touch with what's happening around the country and the world. Just go to a newspaper conference in Taupo for a few days, then stand on 90 Mile Beach for a couple more, willing a snapper to take the bait and hoping, forlornly as it turned out, that if the fish didn't play the game John Stewart, who drew the spot prize numbers at the Bonanza weigh-in, would.

Another enjoyable, and productive, APN conference done and dusted, and the prospects of fame and fortune courtesy of the Snapper Bonanza having faded once again, it was back to the real world on Sunday, and the news that Hone Harawira, the one politician who had hitherto eschewed any temptation to emigrate to another planet, had done just that.

The story began with Mr Harawira's belated admission that he had been invited last year to meet the infamous Kim Dotcom, he who would carve a political career in this country out of alleged criminality in another, but had declined. He hadn't wanted to get swamped - trampled might have been a better word - by the Labour, Green and New Zealand First "pilgrimages" to the mansion, he said. He might have added that he saw no point in meeting with a man widely regarded as a buffoon, but he didn't.

He accepted a second invitation earlier this year, however, albeit at a "mate's place" on Auckland's North Shore. The significance of that might be clear to Mr Harawira, but anyone else can be forgiven for not appreciating it.

Anyway, they passed the time, it seems, agreeing that they don't like the Prime Minister, what he represents and how he operates. They discussed what Mr Harawira's Mana Party and Mr Dotcom's embryonic Internet Party would like to see in New Zealand's future, and what wonderful beaches Aotearoa has.

Mr Harawira now says that Mana and Internet clearly have common interests, although we don't know what those interests might be. Mr Harawira isn't saying, and Mr Dotcom won't be telling us what his policies are, so we can guess, until some time this week, if all goes according to Hoyle.

Mr Harawira says he didn't ask Mr Dotcom to fund his party and the mogul didn't offer to. Nor did he ask him to join Mana, and Mr Dotcom didn't ask Mr Harawira to join the Internet Party. No harm done then. Or was there? We don't know, because once again, this meeting was effectively a secret one. Mr Harawira hadn't spoken about it until a couple of days ago because he had not yet talked to his party executive about it.

Well, knock me down with a feather. Here is a politician who in five years as a Parliamentarian has given not a single hoot about what party executives think, who gives not a toss for Parliamentary and party conventions, who moves to the beat of his own drum and gives not a fat rat's derriere for what anyone might think of that, who suddenly feels compelled to talk to his executive before he tells his constituents that he and Kim Dotcom are kindred spirits.

Mind you, he's not the first to have experienced a burning need for discretion. Winston Peters denied his meeting with Mr Dotcom, attributing his reticence to an agreement between the parties that their tete a tete would be confidential. Why? We don't know, but secrecy and Kim Dotcom don't usually go together.

Green co-leader Russel Norman hemmed and hawed but didn't deny meeting Mr Dotcom. He just couldn't remember who had initiated those meetings. In any event, nothing of any great moment was discussed. That claim was barely credible when it was made, and became even less so with last week's revelations that Mr Dotcom has struck on a brilliant tactic for getting into Parliament without going to the trouble of capturing enough hearts and minds to win a seat of his own.

What he intends to do, it seems, is attach himself to someone who's already there. Assuming that person/party wins an electorate seat on September 20, it and its ally will benefit from every party vote. Mein Gott it's a cunning plan! All it needs is a politician who can hold his seat and bingo!

Not that the Greens are much use there. They don't make a habit of winning electorate seats, and don't even try to these days, but it would be a surprise if they didn't crack the 5 per cent they need to make it back on election night. Mr Harawira does have a seat, of course, so doesn't have to worry about the 5 per cent threshold. One imagines that Peter Dunne would be immune to Mr Dotcom's blandishments, National has made it clear that it wouldn't touch him with a barge pole, Labour says it wouldn't be interested, probably, Winston Peters took offence at being asked, given that everyone knows he doesn't do pre-election deals, the Maori Party doesn't seem to know what's going on and ACT does not expect an invite to the mansion.

That leaves Mana, which is neither conforming nor denying, while Mr Dotcom was reported last week as saying that he had signed up one sitting MP and was courting three more. If Mr Harawira isn't the one who's in the bag as it were he should say so, with or without talking to his executive.

That still leaves three to be identified, and given the number of flakes in the House these days there doesn't seem much point guessing who they might be. Presumably they will announce their intentions before September 20, although that will cost them their seats, if not as the result of voter desertion then by expulsion from their parties.

All this sounds more like a James Bond novel than politics in New Zealand, but whatever happens Kim Dotcom has shaken us out of our traditional torpor. Who could have envisaged a day when an immigrant who seemingly had all the qualities needed to gain residence in this country would brazenly set out to buy MPs? And who could have envisaged Hone Harawira, the one MP who really does stick to his principles whatever that might cost him, falling for it? Of course, he might not have fallen for it. He just can't say so until he's talked to his executive. And he might have a cunning plan of his own to match the needs of his constituents, probably the poorest in the country, with the ambitions of a German multi-millionaire who believes money can buy anything, including democracy.

So much for the real world. It was better by every measure at the conference, where this newspaper once again enjoyed a modicum of critical acclaim, and standing on 90 Mile Beach, where the only fantasies involved catching fish and/or winning a four-wheel-drive. There is no harm in fantasies such as those; even the least lucid of the 700-odd contenders knew that come Monday they'd be back to the normal routine, feeding their families and paying their taxes. In fact megalomaniacs don't seem to fish the Snapper Bonanza. They're probably too busy attending meetings they can't remember organising and don't want to talk about with the people who elected them but which will no doubt make this country a happier, healthier, more prosperous one than it is now, even if that's only for the chosen few.

And with that, I believe I'll have another Tui's.