John Armstrong: Banks’ bull in a china shop act unnerves party

It was a safe bet that John Banks would do more than rattle the crockery at Act's conference on Saturday.

What the party failed to foresee was his trampling bull-in-a-china-shop fashion over what is left of Act's self-esteem.

The former MP made what the struggling party considers to be a mutually advantageous merger look like a takeover bid on his part as he outlined his tough terms for becoming a candidate for Act at this year's election.

He announced he would have to be awarded a slot at the top of the Act list. He brushed aside the party's Tamaki candidate and loyal servant, Ken Shirley, by saying private polling had shown a Banks ticket could win the Auckland seat. He appeared to have appointed himself as a bridge-building intermediary between Act and National, his old party. He was ominously silent when asked if he harboured ambitions to lead Act.

The most generous explanation Act insiders could offer for Mr Banks' willingness to discuss in public what should be negotiated in private was that he had just got carried away in front of the television cameras.

As far as other influential quarters of the party were concerned, however, Mr Banks had well and truly overstepped the mark.

His behaviour certainly served as a salutary reminder that the Banks phenomenon might well be a wild card in the election campaign, but not in the way Act intends.

The biggest danger is that Mr Banks will overshadow the party's leader, Rodney Hide. Those eager to make use of Mr Banks' undoubted political skills may have overlooked the consequent diluting of Mr Hide's leadership that implies.

While there is palpable enthusiasm for bringing Mr Banks on board, Act's board of trustees, the party's governing body, has so far avoided making any commitment.

And wisely so. By making it look as if he is holding Act to ransom, Mr Banks has made an already difficult decision even more vexed.

If the board did not have enough to chew on, Mr Banks was out of kilter with the prevailing circle-the-wagons mood of the conference which saw the National Party criticised for various policy retreats and slammed for being "indistinguishable" from Labour.

In reality, Act is privately delighted that National's "me too" shift to the centre to counter Labour - evident in tax and privatisation policy, for example - has suddenly opened up room for Act on the right.

However, constantly having a go at National to raise Act's profile runs the risk of centre-right voters washing their hands of any prospect of a National-Act coalition and turning their attention, as they did in 2002, to casting their vote for a centre party which can restrain another Labour-led Government.

If anything, Mr Hide has further dimmed any possibility of a National-Act coalition by declaring that Act's policy of an immediate cut in tax rates to 25c in the dollar is a non-negotiable bottom-line.

Mr Banks was not present when Mr Hide made that announcement. But he had earlier told the conference he was not going to bag National and "the real enemy sits on the other side of the House".

His plea for the bickering between National and Act to stop may get some response. The Act hierarchy intends putting a halt to personal insults of the kind that had party president Catherine Judd describing National's Gerry Brownlee as "not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree".

But Act has no intention of reining in its attacks on policy. While they are in part revenge for National taking Act for granted for too long, they are also being justified as "liberating" assertions of Act's separate identity.

They make the party feel good about itself. And when you are wallowing at 2 per cent in the polls, you need all the self-respect you can muster.