National leader Simon Bridges, flanked by deputy leader Paula Bennett, left, and finance spokeswoman Amy Adams, during his press conference over Budget 2019. Photo / Mark Mitchell
National leader Simon Bridges, flanked by deputy leader Paula Bennett, left, and finance spokeswoman Amy Adams, during his press conference over Budget 2019. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Audrey Young
Audrey Young, Senior Political Correspondent at the New Zealand Herald based at Parliament, specialises in writing about politics and power.
It has been a momentous and important week for National Party leader Simon Bridges.
He has been managing a political play that from the outset had the potential to destroy someone's career, that of Secretary Treasury Gabriel Makhlouf or, as it appeared at one point, his own.
Clearly hehad a plan to make as much capital as possible from a gaping hole in Treasury's defences to keep the 2019 Budget confidential. There is nothing wrong with that.
Bridges had been delivered a remarkable weapon by the enterprising staff member who discovered parts of the Budget through an ordinary search on Treasury's website.
The plan was to ambush the Government with news of the breach just as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Finance Minister Grant Robertson were talking to media before Tuesday's caucus, then to drip-feed parts of the Budget, then stage the grand denouement on Thursday to burst the bubble of the Wellbeing Budget. Again there is nothing wrong with that.
One can assume that drip-feeding the Budget windfall material over two days was intended to produce maximum embarrassment for the Government. And why wouldn't National want to do that?
It was the reverse of dramatic irony in the theatre where the audience knows much more than the characters.
In this case, Bridges knew everything and the audience, including the media, the public and political opponents, knew nothing.
There were two factors neither Bridges nor his close advisers working out the war plan could have anticipated.
Illustration / Guy Body
The first was that Makhlouf would call in the police to complain that Treasury had been the victim of a deliberate and sustained hacking attempt, and the second was that the police would break the habit of a lifetime by starting and concluding an inquiry within 24 hours.
It is possible that Makhlouf himself did not anticipate the police acting so quickly either. He may have thought it would take at least a month, by which time he would be heading to his new job at Ireland's Central Bank.
What added huge weight to Makhlouf's referral to the police was his reference to the GCSB's National Cyber Security Centre.
"Following this morning's media reports of a potential leak of Budget information, the Treasury has gathered sufficient evidence to indicate that its systems have been deliberately and systematically hacked. The Treasury has referred the matter to the police on the advice of the National Cyber Security Centre."
Finance Minister Grant Robertson weighed in as well in a statement which made a strong link to National and hacking.
There was some suspicion that the referral to the police may have been a way to remove a huge embarrassment from the political arena, allowing Treasury's political masters to take refuge in a no-comment because it was now the subject of a police investigation. That would be bad enough.
Bridges had the evidence, the opportunity and every reason to put the reputation of the National Party ahead of sticking to the plan for the big reveal to disrupt the Budget.
But Makhlouf's reference to the National Cyber Security Centre elevated its seriousness. And the State Services review must look at the basis of that reference in his statement.
In the middle of National's well-laid plans to run an A-grade scandal, the party, by anyone's definition, was being linked to serious criminal activity.
It was a game-changer and Bridges and his advisers should have changed their plan immediately to address the smear against the party.
Bridges had the evidence, the opportunity and every reason to put the reputation of the National Party ahead of sticking to the plan for the big reveal to disrupt the Budget.
He should have come clean on Wednesday but instead appeared to think if he protested loudly enough that would do the trick.
He and his advisers may have known the truth, but they failed to see how others would see them. Basically they were saying we "can prove our innocence but we are not going to".
They lost perspective. Because they knew they were innocent of a crime, they interpreted calls for them to clear up the allegations as quickly as possible as an attack on Bridges' integrity.
They behaved as though they were under siege. They behaved like victims. One of Bridges' strengths to date has been his ability to brush off slings, arrows and occasionally cannon fire. That changed. They behaved as though this were the issue on which Bridges' leadership hung.
If he had managed it better, this could have been an absolute triumph for Bridges instead of a vindication. The evidence he eventually revealed on Thursday spoke volumes.
National Party leader Simon Bridges during his response after the reading of the Budget 2019 in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The video exposing the search bar scandal was devastating in its simplicity.
But one of the glaring questions at the press conference, and one Bridges didn't adequately answer on the several occasions he was asked, was why didn't he reveal the facts earlier when he could have.
If he had done so, the pressure would have immediately gone on to Treasury and Robertson over their actions and statement of Tuesday. Instead the pressure went on National.
The big reveal came before the Budget, after some speculation that he might do it after the Budget. Having made the mistake of leaving the denouement so late, doing it after the Budget would have been an even bigger mistake.
It would have said that upsetting the Government was more important than the people whose lives are affected by this Budget who are largely real victims - of mental illness, poverty or violence.
It is perhaps indicative of the luck Bridges has had in his leadership that when he has finally claimed a scalp, as he almost certainly has, it is of someone who was already leaving for greener fields.
There is no doubt that Bridges' leadership has taken a new energy recently. It didn't begin with the Budget. It began with the regional conferences around the country last month.
The first one in Hamilton was reportedly a lacklustre performance but, during the course of them, he improved markedly. By the end he was sounding like a confident leader of the Opposition.
All things considered, it was a very good week for Bridges but it could have been a brilliant week.
