John Armstrong: Brash caught in headlights

With just two weeks to go before Don Brash launches National's formal election campaign, the party needs to ask itself some hard questions.

Judging from what we have seen so far of its advertising, National's campaign will be the equal, if not the better, of Labour's, thanks to some innovative thinking at party headquarters. But day-to-day tactical management by the parliamentary wing has National flirting with disaster.

For the second time in three weeks, the leader has stumbled over National's ambivalence on retaining the the law banning visits by nuclear-powered ships.

Predictions that Brash's inexperience would find him out when Labour really started applying the blowtorch were born out again by Phil Goff's ambush during question-time in Parliament on Tuesday.

It took National more than 24 hours to come up with damage control to counter the Foreign Minister's revisiting of the now infamous "gone by lunchtime" meeting Don Brash and his foreign affairs spokesman, Lockwood Smith, held with visiting American senators in January last year.

Most of the blame is being sheeted home to Smith for failing to tell Brash what else might have been lurking in the minutes, namely that Smith had suggested to the senators that an American think-tank help sway New Zealand public opinion on ending the nuclear ships ban.

While Brash's advisers were trying to sort that out, Smith tried to shift the argument to Goff's further exploitation of supposedly confidential discussions.

That could not obscure the damage Goff was inflicting in once again using the minutes as evidence of National's intention to amend the anti-nuclear law.

National's more immediate worry for the campaign is that Brash did not seem to think there was a problem.

Brash seemed peeved that the matter was back in the headlines despite his prior assurances National would not repeal the ban unless it had the backing of a majority vote in a referendum or it made repeal a manifesto commitment - which it will not be doing at this election.

However, such lightning raids to undermine Brash's and National's credibility will just keep on coming.

The Prime Minister has put "trust" at the centre of her campaign - just as her conservative Australian counterpart John Howard did in his last year.

Helen Clark is portraying Labour as the party of the sensible status quo standing up for the values New Zealanders hold dear, such as an independent foreign policy. She is trying to marginalise Brash as the face of "radical policy change" and a threat to those values.

Labour is going to be ruthless in finding ways to constantly remind voters of this.

National has sounded internal warnings all year of just how ruthless Labour would get. Yet, when it came to the crunch of the last week of Parliament, National thought it could bask in Clark's motorcade embarrassment when Labour would obviously try to create a distraction.

With Brash having run foul of the anti-nuclear policy during the recess, National should have been alert to Labour resurrecting it and been ready with a retaliatory strike.

Instead, Lockwood Smith was forced on to the defensive, denying what the minutes of the meeting recorded him as saying.

He had a valid point arguing Goff had again breached diplomatic protocol by selectively quoting from confidential discussions with a foreign delegation.

But in terms of political impact, Goff's crime comes a distant second to National selling out New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy.

National's admission it was handling things badly came on Wednesday when deputy leader Gerry Brownlee was called in to front National's response to Goff.

Bringing in a political streetfighter like Brownlee to slug it out with Goff highlighted Brash's deficiencies as a political pugilist. Brash may find it more difficult to exit the ring in the intensity of the campaign proper.

Brownlee's intervention was also a sticking-plaster solution to the difficulty National is having in getting the nuclear ship bogey off its back.

While it is doubtful Labour can extract much more political mileage from this issue, National is possum in the headlights, petrified at infringing nationalistic emotions and stranded between re-embracing the policy or ditching it.

Having let the genie out of the bottle by conducting an internal party review of the policy, National has ended up in the worst of all positions by not having a clear stance on repealing the legislation.

Brash seems to think that by saying National will repeal the ban only if a referendum gives the nod or National makes repeal a future manifesto commitment he has put the issue to bed.

That ducks the question of where National really stands on repeal. It leaves it hanging - to Labour's delight.

National might have been better to have made a stand on principle. It could have declared New Zealand's trade and defence interests required the blockage in relations with the United States be removed, and a National Government would put the ban to a referendum.

Such a stand would silence Labour on the question of trust.

Brash succeeds only in looking like he is hiding something when he refuses to make a firm public statement regarding National's preference, given he has hinted previously he is personally inclined to amend the law.

Little wonder then that Goff tucked away for a rainy day the suggestion that Lockwood Smith wanted to drag an American think-tank into New Zealand domestic politics. It was another example of National saying one thing in public and another in private.

Each inconsistency alone is not terminal for National. It is the accumulation that interests Labour.

In a close election where the prevailing mood falls short of wanting to throw out the Government regardless, those voters leaning towards chucking Labour out will be less inclined the more doubts they harbour of the viability of the alternative.

Labour has no qualms about how it goes about compounding those doubts. Diplomatic protocol may have been breached for political gain. That will have been forgotten by election day. The stain on National's credibility will remain.