Audrey Young: Silence adds to the murk

A threatened lawsuit by former Police Commissioner Peter Doone against Prime Minister Helen Clark is not going to stop me writing about them, any more than it will stop the Opposition putting the acid on Clark in Parliament next week, or any more than it should stop her explaining herself about her involvement in his demise.

There will be plenty of questions awaiting Clark as she makes her entry back into the grime of domestic politics from her victory salutes with John Howard on the Gallipoli peninsula.

Why did she talk to a newspaper about the Police Commissioner when his job was on the line? Was it proper for her to have an off-the-record discussion?

Why did she say that Doone had uttered the particular words "that won't be necessary" to the young constable who stopped his car (the newspaper later said the words had not been uttered)?

Did she really believe Doone had said that, did she mean something like that, or did she make it up?

Was she trying to get rid of Doone or to fast-track his demise? The propriety of the Sunday Star-Times in naming its source is another matter, but now that it has, why did she speak to the paper five times on the matter?

It will not be possible for Clark to shelter behind the excuse of legal advice that she stay silent while Act and National are attacking her integrity.

It is difficult to imagine that any political leader in an election year would give the Opposition a free hit on the mere threat of legal suit.

Between Clark's involvement in the Doone case, and John Tamihere's first return to the chamber since his "tosser/tugger/smarmy" indiscretions, not to mention the declining business confidence, and the Families Commission's casualty, the Opposition parties will be spoilt for choice.

At the end of the week, however, the measure of their success will be the answer to this question: has the public's trust in the Prime Minister diminished?

The measure of Helen Clark's success will be whether the public believes that Peter Doone and his wife, Robyn, have just cause to blame her, more than his own actions, for losing his job as Police Commissioner.

On the face of it, Helen Clark's job should not be too hard.

The basics of what happened that night were well-established in the public arena several weeks before the article containing the offending phrase was published.

Two critical reports had already been completed, one by the Deputy Commissioner, the other the Police Complaints Authority.

The Government had lost confidence in Doone before the article was published.

Attorney-General Margaret Wilson had already written to him, initiating steps that would have almost certainly led to his dismissal if he had not eventually done the honourable thing and resigned.

There is a strong case for arguing that Doone was doomed without the article and without any help Clark might have given.

But Clark must explain herself quickly before the episode begins to look murkier than it does already.

The Government knows from its own experience the importance of managing problems.

"It is the nature of Government that not everything goes smoothly," Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen told his party conference this month. "The issue is not how problems arise but how quickly and effectively they are dealt with (or to, as the case may be)."

The Government also knows from its own experience how lethal a climate of sleaze can be - as does Doone.

He had been the subject of a slow-burning campaign by the Opposition over the Incis police computer debacle. So too was Christine Rankin, then head of Winz, or Work and Income as it was resanitised by Labour.

Both their names were part of the passing parade of players that Labour, in Opposition, tarred as political sleaze affecting a wide range of issues: Tuku's underwear, the Tourism Board, golden handshakes, chartered flights to Waiariki, wacky courses for civil servants.

Labour was a well-tuned machine, practised at turning negative news into disastrous news for the Government and making it last and last. It worked like compound interest on a debt, getting worse and worse.

There are faint echoes of those days developing again.

Act leader Rodney Hide is specially gifted in that department. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters hasn't lost the knack; some in National have it.

The difference is that this Opposition does not operate as a team.

But that is not to say the accusations are not having some effect, and that is why Labour should be feeling uneasy.

The police pornography scandal builds on the unallocated police cases, which build on the 111 call debacles, which build on the historic charges against serving and former officers, which come on top of the Te Wananga o Aotearoa management, which builds on the scholarship exam and NCEA debacle, which builds on the funding for twilight golf courses and hip-hop tours.

If each issue is not killed, there is a lingering fog that clouds the public's trust in the Government's ability to manage its affairs.

The mounting difficulties on police matters are approaching that stage.

The sense of losing control is not a problem that has plagued this Government.

It is more vulnerable to perceptions of over-control, social engineering, political correctness and manipulation.

For this reason, the latest police problem, the porn scandal, is likely to be dealt with very carefully by the Government, because of the uncertainty over how much public opprobrium there really is for the varying degrees of porn.

And Helen Clark does not want her Government to be cast as the bossy "thought police" for the real police.

But there should be no such caution when it comes to setting the record straight on Doone.

If she has legal advice to keep quiet, political reality demands that she ignore it.